5. Ice In The Harbour, Shivers All Around

All of the nearby harbours have been filled with ice these past three days. It came without warning. One night the harbour was clear and rippling, and the next morning it was filled with blue-tinged ice – a sign of it being frozen fresh water, not salt. Or, at least, that’s what a friend of my mother’s said. It brought with it an end to the almost springlike weather we’d been having for about a week. No snow has fallen, thankfully, but I have been cold all week, no matter where I go. In school, it’s been too cold. At home, it’s been too cold (my mother recently recieved her absolutely shocking oil heating bill, and so has issued a ban on the thermostat – she’s sure the cause is my siblings and I turning it too far up every time we have a little shiver. We have to ask her to turn it up, sigh). And if I step outside, the cold wind coming off the ocean bites my face and sweeps through my coat, my pants, my shoes. The walk from the school busstop to my house has become a chore, instead of a pleasant chat with friends who get off at the same stop.
It’s making it very difficult for me to concentrate. It doesn’t help that I’ve had major headaches along with it. I just wish winter would end already!

Tomorrow I will take a few pictures of the harbour and post them, if I can find time (plans for tomorrow: going to Chapters. As always, there is a risk that I will never come out, haha! And… the closest one is about an hour and a half away. Also I have assignments due on Monday – as well as a couple that were due today and yesterday, eheheh – that I need to finish).

Unconnected to the cold, I recently started writing a new story that seems like a big deal to me. I am having a bit of trouble with one of the characters, though, as I’m trying to keep them as unknown as possible while still letting their personality shine. I.E. I am completely avoiding the use of any genderized descriptions (him, her, his, hers, he, she), not mentioning physical appearance directly (although I do mention others’ reactions to it), not talking about the character’s past, not clearly stating what their relationship with the main character is, although it is obviously friendly. It’s difficult, but a fun challenge! I wind up with too many epithets and using the character’s name too much, but I’m not too worried. I’ve mainly been writing it during school, but I will probably work on it over the weekend (probably while I should be doing by Physics assignment… it’s two days overdue and I haven’t even started it. I really don’t like Physics) because I’m getting really into it.

Anyways, I’m probably going to be hauled out of my bed into the cold of my room (which, due to unfortunate heating vent placement, is usually even colder than the rest of my house) far earlier than I’d like, so I’ll just sign off now.

Aureate

4. Of Accidental French And Twittering

This title is a bit less creative than the past few, I’ll admit. But hey, it certainly describes the content well!

I’ve noticed myself using French a lot more lately, and not just in French class. It’s happened several times that a French word or phrase will slip into a completely unrelated English conversation. I’ve noticed it happening a lot when I don’t hear what someone says clearly. I’ll say “Quoi?” instead, and it sounds enough like “Wha?” that I didn’t even notice that I was doing it until lately. It makes my sister die laughing whenever it’s her that I ask; she finds it incredibly amusing for some reason.

Not all of it is so similar though, and usually because of that I catch myself just before saying it instead of just after. It even happens in my thoughts (when I was thinking about how I should make a post today, I found myself thinking about the vitesse of my posting instead of the speed. Oops!) at times. Some of it might not even be correct, but I don’t really think about it beforehand, it just ends up substituting itself for whatever english word/phrase I was intending to say.

Honestly it isn’t much of a problem, just a little annoying (mostly because the grammatical stickler within me always reminds be that it just doesn’t work like that, you can’t just stick French words into English whenever you like!). I would like to think that it’s really happening because I’m getting good enough at the language to use it really well – i.e., not having to translate in wy head, being able to just know what something means, just as well as I just know the term in English. I really don’t know, though. =)

In other news, I broke down to the fad and got myself a Twitter account. It’s proved to be extremely addicting – I only made it today and there are already more short but silly posts that you can shake a stick at. I should warn anyone with their mouse over that link that most of them aren’t at all in the same tone as my posts on here are. These are carefully written, refined posts that have a few central ideas in each one that are explained and described in detail. The “tweetings” or “twitterings” or whatever they are supposed to be called are basically anything that comes to mind at the time, and so some are pretty stupid/silly. You have been warned, haha!

As addicting as they may be, Twitter isn’t a substitute for a good blog post. Nothing feels nicer than rambling on for a while about things of moderate importance.

Aureate

3. Plans Will Always Go Awry In Thought, If Not In Substance

A week, I said. BAH. As soon as I said that, I should have known: I would never be able to update exactly on time. At least this is sooner, and not later. If it had been later, I would have to apologize, which is not something I am fond of doing.

There are plenty of nice, writing-related links in the Writing Links page now, in case anyone is interested in seeing the sorts of websites I frequent when I am feeling like a writer.

I have recently realized that in all TWO posts that I have made so far, I have gone on a fair bit about speaking other tongues and travelling and things like that, and not very much about writing, which I must say was my first love. I’ve wanted to be a published author since I was eight.

Yes, eight. That was when I wrote my very first, er, “novel”. It was sixteen pages long and was called “Christina’s Special Friend”. It was about dragons, and was heavily influenced by another book, called “Johnathan Dreams Of Dragons” by… Well, I can’t remember the authors name, now. Sorry. I shall have to do some research on that one. Anyways, my mother was very enthusiastic about my story, and she even sent it out to some children’s book publishers. Needless to say, since neither of us had any idea what we were doing, and the story kind of sucked, we were rejected many times. I did get one very nice handwritten rejection from a publisher telling me to keep writing, but that may have just been because my mother had put my age in the query letter. I don’t know what my mom did with that letter… I should find it. It would make a very nice keepsake.

Anyways, I haven’t stopped writing since then, even though most of it ended up unfinished. The few novel(la)s that I have completed first drafts for were through NaNoWriMo (see writing links page). My non-stick-to-it-iveness bites me in the rear end even here, though, as I’m horrible when it comes to going over my own work and editing it when it’s as big as even a very small novel. Still, I keep writing, because I really do enjoy it. Dragons have continued to feature prominently in my stories (even if I have been drifting away from them after my first NaNoWriMo novella, DragonBlood… Which is still lying unedited in my writing folder, hehe) and they’re almost always fantasy.

Right now I’m working on a project, even if for the past few months I’ve been distracted by other things. It doesn’t really have a title yet, but it is going fairly well, and I’m starting to want to go back and write some more of it. Especially after writing all of this about writing!

Hmm. Reading over what I’ve written, my tone has gotten a lot more casual in this post than the previous ones. This is good, because that means I’m getting more relaxed and used to this sort of writing. Writing something that you know people could see immediately afterward is much different (for me) than writing something that is intended for others to see, but not until some vague point in the future. It seems a lot more important to sound like you know what you are talking about, as opposed to just writing it how you want it to be, and then checking it against the facts later. Any thoughts on this are welcomed!

Aureate

2. If I Have My Way, I’ll Never Settle Down

Well, it’s a bit later than I had intended, but oh well.

When it comes to travel, a lot of the reasoning for me would be to learn a new languages. I absolutely adore them, even if the only ones I know enough to hold a conversation are English and French. I’m probably a little biased, but I think that I’m doing quite well in French. All of my learning so far has been from school, although I’m trying to get into an exchange program during the next school year.

Haha, my ideal life would be spent going from one place to another to learn the language and experience how things are in other places. Then, whenever I got bored of one place or language or culture, I would move on to the next. Since I can still do translating over the internet, going from place to place would actually be an investment – the more languages I know, the more demand there would be for my translating skills. I’d have to spend about three or four years in each place (and I’d probably have to take some sort of course to get me the basics before fully “moving in” to each one) in order to get enough knowledge of that language, but as long as I put in enough effort into doing translating and still getting out there and learning, I should be able to make it work.

I have to say that I am a little worried as to whether I can put in that effort. I’ve always had things come easily for me when it comes to working (i.e. school), and that’s beginning to absolutely suck. It’s a struggle to realize that I need to stick to something and continue to work at it, and work at it, and work at it. I don’t even do as well in school as some people, even if I think that I could, because it doesn’t seem worth the effort. I don’t mind settling for second best, as long as that means I don’t have to try so hard. It’s really something I need to change, even if that’s going to be difficult as I’d have to put effort into making a habit of putting effort into things!

Let’s hope I’m stubborn enough to make it work.

I’ve decided that I will try to update at least once per week; I want a constant to aim for, to make my posts stay consistant instead of frequently and then dropping off to only one post every couple months (as has happened with other blogs I’ve had). Haha, I’m determined to make this blog a permanent thing – I rather like it. Of course, I will post more frequently if I find I feel like doing so before a week is up.

Aureate

1. Going To Go So Far Away

In my high school, we have several exchange students from South Korea, here learning english. A while ago, I was friends with a girl named Jane (who’s real name is Ye Sol, but they take English names when they study the language, which is kind of neat). Unfortunately, we’ve since grown apart a bit, and since we don’t share any classes we don’t talk much at all anymore. My interest in Korea hasn’t faded, though, and I’ve been doing a lot of reasearch since then.

I’ve actually begun to study the language, as well, although I’m still at the basics, learning hangul and some basic vocabulary (colours, days of the week, frequently used phrases like “hello” and “thank you”, and so on). It is really interesting, and has propelled me to want to do a four week intensive course in S. Korea after I finish highschool. I’ve wanted to be a translator for a while now anyways, so the more languages I know the better. If I like it there, I may try to get a job over there (probably as an English teacher, as the private schools there do hire people who can merely speak English, as opposed to actually having a teaching degree or whatever is necessary to teach otherwise, haha) to further improve my Korean. It’s really exciting to think of going so far away.

I suppose I’ve always intended to leave home and not come back, although not in the whining, yelling way that some people my age might utilize. I just want to go away and see what else there is out there. I have never actually been outside of Canada, and even within it I am not very well traveled, especially not since my family moved to Newfoundland over seven years ago. There isn’t much racial diversity in this area – almost everyone is white and speaks English. It’s going to be an incredible change to go somewhere were almost none of the population is white, and they speak Korean. The course I’ll be going to is intended for international students, though, so it shouldn’t be too bad during the first month I am there. Even if I do end up staying, it will be good to have the first month to adjust with a slightly less drastic change than it would be if I didn’t go.

If I can manage to keep this blog updated regularly – which I really will try to do – for any length of time, a lot of what will be here will have to do with this trip to Korea. Even though I won’t be going until after I graduate next year, I’m still very excited about it now, and every time I read a blog written by someone else who is there, or research something about the country or culture that I’m wondering about, I get excited all over again!

Well, that’s all for now, although I may update again as soon as tomorrow.

Aureate.