Day: February 9, 2009

We got up at an insanely early hour on Saturday, got our stuff together, ate a banana and some Cheerios and headed out the door to the testing center.  I had a good time. I wasn’t too nervous when I got there and my pencils were sharp, so there wasn’t really anything to worry about.  They put me in a classroom with 15 older kids.  The girl on my left was perfect. She looked super prepared, like she did history and science homework for fun.  And she actually dressed nicely for the exam. If you’ll look at the picture below (on Dad’s post) you’ll see that I went for the ‘casual-casual’ look… black pants, t-shirt and running shoes. 😉

Anyway, I did better than I thought I would. Or at least that’s how it feels right now. We’ll see how I actually did when the scores come in in a few weeks.  The English exam was the easiest of all, then reading comprehension, then science, then math. Science was OK. It was basically analyzing graphs, but it helped to know the subjects that the graphs were dealing with. Fortunately I had studied most of the material that was on the science test before, but a couple of them really stumped me and I had to guess.  Math was nightmare-ish. It was simple at first. Then it got harder and harder. Soon I was dealing with things that I had only studied briefly or that I hadn’t studied at all! I’m pretty sure that I’ll be able to ace it next year though. By that time I’ll have all the math that I need for the test. 

The essay was amazing.  The topic was perfect! I mean, what can be easier for a fourteen year old girl to write about than ‘nice clothing’ and ‘dressing to impress’?  I honestly think that it was my best ACT essay ever. I don’t think my outfit helped my brainstorming much, but my mind was in the right place. 🙂

Troy and I sat in the Wake County Regional Library at Cameron Village and studied on Saturday while Lorena and Youngin went shopping in Cameron Village.  The kids were over at St. Augustine College to take their ACT.  I do not know how much studying Troy got accomplished, I was pretty manic almost all day and had lots of interesting things to say (at least they were interesting to me, I am not sure about Troy).  It was a beautiful sunny day.  The kids enjoyed the test.  Lorena and I enjoyed hanging out with Troy and Youngin.  We ate some GREAT food at a noodle place in Cameron Village after the test.  I was a little bit saddened because I know we will probably not be going to the Holly Springs library too much any more.  You can drink coffee in the stacks at the Cameron Village library, they have a McDonalds (for breakfast) right around the corner, Lorena can go shopping while Kelly, Christian, and I read books, it is on the way to Costco.  How much better does it get than that?  Still, I LOVED the Holly Springs Library.  We will have to go back there sometime soon for nostalgia’s sake.

St. Augustine College has a neat campus which seems to be right in the center of Raleigh.  While I was waiting for the kids to complete their tests, I noticed that they had won a ton of Division II NCAA National Track and Field Championships.  I think it would be kind of fun to go to a track meet there.  It will not be the Olympic Trials or even a UCLA-Oregon dual meet at Hayward Field, but I bet it would be pretty fun.  I am not sure how well the kids did on the test, but they seemed to think they did OK.  They felt like the math part was the hardest, the science next, and then the English and reading comprehension.  Kelly felt pretty good about the essay portion of her test, too.  We will have to wait and see how it comes out.

Sunday between the morning meeting and the gospel meeting in the afternoon, we all sat down, turned on some classical music, and did some portrait drawing.  We were a little rusty, but it was a LOT of fun.  We have decided we are going to try to do that as often as we can now on Sunday afternoons.  We did a little bit of reading, too.  While we did that, Christian knit a couple of additional rows on his Ubuntu Scarf.  It is coming out awesome.  You can see the logo now.  We can hardly wait until he finishes.  He is thinking of doing a Linux Mint scarf next.  They have a logo that would look greate on a scarf, but it might not be that easy to do.  Maybe he will be ready to try to do it on a sweater or something by the time he gets started.

Note:  I heard on the radio that we will be able to listen to Dave Ramsey on WPTF from 9-12 on weekday mornings.  I hope I will still be able to hear him on afternoons on the way home from work, too!