Update 6/8/09

I got my TB tests and some painful shots (my arms were sore for a couple days after), and now there is nothing left to finish on my secondary application for going to Germany. I am excited! I also met another girl who was accepted into the program, and will be flying to Washington D.C. with her, where I will meet up with the other CBYX kids to fly to Germany.

I started the ACE program (sponsored by Maricopa Community Colleges, where, starting the summer before their junior year, students will take college courses all throughout the rest of their school year. They will be making an exception for me, since I will be unable to attend an American school during my year in Germany) last Monday, where I am taking college math and career and personal development courses, and got a 95% on my first math exam. It was really easy and all review, but it's quite boring since I stay there for about 11 hours a day, due to issues with driving back and forth. I'm starting highschool courses with Prima Vera online highschool to pass the time, and I will be starting June 15th on Spanish 1A and Psychology A. I'm also helping Mrs. Kurfman write her textbook for her AIMs Math class.

The ACE program is only Monday through Thursday, so on Fridays I am volunteering at the All Faith's Food Bank. I have to ride my bike into Buckeye to get there, but they have water and such for their volunteers, so it's all good.

I got an e-mail suggesting that I get my host family gifts, and it also said that flowers would be a good idea since German women love to recieve them. I thought that giving flowers that you can buy would be less special than making flowers that never die, so I am going to draw the following picture for my host mother.

(If you want to see the full picture, since some of it was cut off, you can do so here.)

My next conference/orientation will be on Friday, so I will most likely be posting information over the weekend about that.

Mr. Henrion suggested that I read a book called The Math Instinct: Why You're a Mathematical Genius (Along with Lobsters, Birds, Cats, and Dogs), and I finally found it, albeit by accident, at the Estrella Mountain Community College Library. It's extremely fascinating, and I will be posting a summary of it later. It finally made me understand this quote by Albert Einstein, "If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." To explain this quote more, Einstein was agnostic but believed in Spinoza's God, which to my understanding is an impersonal interconnectedness between all things, and is observable through science. That quote really made me think when I first saw it, since he is describing an amazement at nature... I didn't realize how strange and sophisticated it could possibly be until I starting reading that book Mr. Henrion told me to look at... speaking of teachers, I saw Mr. Eads at EMCC (Estrella Mountain Community College) today. Apparently he teaches math there over the summer.

(By the way, I'm not implying I am agnostic by understanding Einstein's quote. In fact, I find that the sophistication of nature enforces the idea that this world couldn't possibly have happened by chance.)