Back?

It's been nearly three years since I published a blog post, and in those three years nearly every part of my life has changed. When I think about the person that wrote blog posts here in 2016 and before, it really feels like a completely different person.

I'd love to get back into blogging again. It's a great way to encapsulate how I felt and what I was thinking about at a particular point in time, and a good way to update family and friends about what I'm up to.

Right now, I simply don't have the time or energy to get back into blogging though. I'm currently 2 months away from graduating with my BA in English. I currently have four different jobs, and between them work somewhere between 35 and 45 hours any given week. I'm looking for new apartments to move into and need to start looking for a new car soon as well. There's a lot going on.

My hope is that during the summer, once I've finished school and things begin to calm down a little, I will have time to write about some of the things I've done over the last 3 years. I recently spent 3 weeks in West Africa, and I have lots of thoughts and stories to share about that experience, when I have the time.

I'll be back soon (I hope)!

Homeschool Friday: Weeks 9 & 10

I've been a little behind on blogging lately, but I am going to blame it on NaNoWriMo and leave it at that.

First of all, here is a short summary about last week (Oct. 28-Nov. 1). I did not get a lot done. Halloween was kind of a big deal this year, and with all the stuff going on, school did not end up being my top priority. I did no history, a little Spanish, some math, some science, and half of a Rhetoric chapter. Latin was my best subject of the week. Also, I hosted (and sort of led) a discussion for The Joy Luck Club for our teen book club (our theme this year is World Lit). I hope to write a review of the Joy Luck Club soon, but you know, it is November.

This week went much, much better.

History
For history this week, I did a short writing assignment where I did some research on the Abbasid Dynasty, and wrote several paragraphs about their rise, fall, and the various things that happened in between. I then read and summarized a long chapter out of my textbook about the early middle ages in Europe, ending with the Vikings.

Math and Science
I did not do quite as well here. I did two science lessons on earthquakes, and I did four out of the five math lessons. One of them I did terribly one, one was a test (which I did better on then I had expected), and the other two went pretty well.

Latin and Spanish
In Latin, I finished the chapter I was working, which is really good. It was pretty short, but mostly translation, which is a little more time consuming. I actaully did this book two years ago, but this year I felt like I was not ready to move on to the next book in the series, so I started over, meaning that I have done this all before. I think the repetition is helping me, and I actually know what is coming up. Right now, the translation passages are all ones written by the authors of the textbook, which means they are pretty generic, but I know that pretty soon I will move into older passages (modified for an intermediate student) that were actaully written in Latin hundreds or thousands of years ago.

In Spanish, I finally am almost done with the intro chapter, which is really good. It will be nice to move in to some real grammar and useful information.

Rhetoric
In Rhetoric, I worked through the chapter about statistics, which was fun. They gave me statistics (some straight numbers, others summaries) which I had to analyze, and decide whether or not you can draw conclusions from it, and, if you can, what kind of conclusions. Definetly the most fun I have had in Rhetoric all year!

English, ect.
I am not doing any official English until the new year, which is really nice. I am, of course, writing a novel, but there will be another post about that later today. I am also rereading Things Fall Apart for the World Lit group.

So, that is pretty much it. I have finished several books in the last few weeks, all of which I really want to review if I have time. I am thinking about taking today off of NaNo (even though I am behind) and get a bunch of blog posts written up. We'll see.

Homeschool Friday: September 23-27 2013 {Week 4}

We are now at the end of week 4 of our school year, meaning there are only 34 left to go (that sounds like kind of a lot). You might have noticed today that the Summer Reading 2013 page up top went away, and was replaced with 10th grade curriculum. That way, if you are curious about any of the curriculum I am currently using, or see in a post that I did two lessons of math, and are curious what math program, you can now find out!

History
I finished Beowulf, and worked on a writing assignment about Christian and Pagan influences throughout the poem. I did not do as much work as I would have liked, but I think it should be fine.

Science
I did a lot of science this week. I've been reading mostly about minerals and mineralogy.

Spanish
I got stuck early in the week with an exercise where I needed to learn the alphabet. I can't move on until I have it down, and I'm not remembering any part of it, not matter how many times I listen to it on the CD.

English
I've moved into a section on verbs, but I didn't get a lot done in English this week.

Math, Rhetoric, ect.
In math, I did about five lessons, which is good, but not enough to get me caught up. In Rhetoric, I've been continuing to work on a chapter about definitions.

Well, there's not a lot to talk about this week. Mostly just more of the same. I'm going to try to get some more Rhetoric done tonight if I can, and then maybe some math and English this weekend if I have time, which I very well might not. We will see how that all goes. I posted this late today, because I wanted to see how much school I got done today. Hopefully next week will be a little more interesting.

Don't forget I'm going a Q&A post soon, so if you have any questions about homeschooling (or really anything else) for me, please let me know, and I will answer them.

NaNoWriMo - It's Coming!

For the last two years, I have participated in National Novel Writing Month each November. Basically, the idea is to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. So far, I've successfully done it twice, and I'm excited to go at it again this year.

Last year, I worried a lot about the story, and ended up totally switching gears 20k words in because I didn't really like what I had done. This year, I'm going to try to forget the story, and focus on writing. While the story is obviously important, I'm not going to do any planning AT ALL (pantsers FTW!), and I won't even have any idea what I'm doing until the day before. How am I going to do that? A few years ago, I received the Storymatic as a gift, but have never really used it. It's a box with two types of cards: character cards, and plot cards. Character cards are things like: wrestler, servant, animal psychic, or mascot for a professional sports team. The plot cards are things like: shouldn't have touched it, nobody is watching, flat tire, or fear of getting old. I like them because they give you lots of freedom, but still get your creativity going.

My plan (at least so far, things could still change), is to pull a two or three character cards, and one or two plot cards on Oct. 31. That will give me some time to think about how I'll incorporate them all into my story. Then, whenever I need something new, I'll pull a new card. The story I end up with will be totally ridiculous, and the plot will probably be full of holes, but that's okay. I'm not writing this story because I want to publish it. If I did, things would be different. I'm writing to write. I want practice writing, and practice with being flexible with my story.

During November, I'm going to be pretty busy trying to keep up with school and NaNoWriMo, so I might not have a lot of time to blog. I will try to blog twice a week (on Fridays and Saturdays), once to do my weekly school wrap up, and once to do a NaNo update. I might have time to write some posts ahead of time and publish them through out the month, but if not, I'll be back to regular posting in December.

I know November is still a ways away, and I'll probably post a few more NaNo planning posts before then. In the meantime, I do have some posts planned. I will be reviewing a short story anthology tomorrow, along with my usual school update. Doing those updates has helped me do more, I think, because I don't want to say that I didn't get anything done. I want to tell you about all the amazing work I did. :)

I also have two more posts in the My Favorite Things series coming up in the next few weeks, and another book review coming up sometime next week. I also thought it would be fun to do another homeschooling QA post, so if you have questions about homeschooling (or other things, it doesn't have to be just homeschooling), please let me know so I can get that post started! I'll be asking for questions on Google+ today as well.

Also, this blog now has a twitter account! If you use twitter, follow me @RWGHBlog to be updated when new posts are published, and to hear about books I love, and other fun literary stuff!

Homeschool Fridays: September 16-20, 2013 {Week 3}

Wow, it's the end of the third week of our school year already! I ended last week a bit behind, and I'm ending this week the same way. Luckily, I actually did a little more then a week's work, so I'm less behind then I was. As confusing as that sounds, it means that progress is being made! In these posts I'm going to focus more on the topics I'm covering, and the things I'm learning rather then the number of lessons or chapters I completed.

History: Middle Ages
History has been tough this week. I have read all but about 30 pages of Beowulf, and I hope to have it finished this afternoon. The version I'm reading is a very literal translation, and I've found it to be a bit of a struggle to understand. I also did a little research on Germanic tribes (Goths, Vandals, ect.), and did a small writing project. I also had a map on the Viking expansion to complete, but unfortunately, I don't think that's likely to get done this week. Next week, I hope to do the map, write an essay on the Christian vs. pagan influences in Beowulf, and begin the textbook reading on the spread of Islam.

Earth Science
I did a LOT of science this week, and am finally finished with all the intro stuff, and the section on maps. Hopefully that means things will start getting a little more interesting next week.

English, Vocab, Rhetoric
For English, I was a bit stalled out at the beginning of the week, and am still a lesson behind. Vocabulary is pretty easy, though I still have a a few paragraphs to write for this weeks review assignment. Rhetoric was a VERY long lesson on definitions, which I only did about a third of. Since there are only 25 lessons in the book, I can affoard to slow down and spread these long lessons out over several weeks.

Math and Spanish
For math, I'm just plodding along. I'm about a lesson behind where I want to be, but I'm not too worries about that. For Spanish, I did some number practice, and learned a lot of pronunciation rules.

That's it for this week! I have a lot of other thing I want to talk about today, but I think I'm going to make them into a separate post. Expect another post later this morning!

Back to School! {link up}

Today, I'm participating in the September Let's Homeschool Highschool blog hop! This month's theme is Back to School, which is great, since I was already planning on writing a post on this general topic.

This year, the new school year isn't as exciting for me as at has been some years. There isn't much new curriculum, but there are still new topics. With the classical method, you come back to each main history and science topic every four years, so I am doing things this year that I haven't done since 6th grade. If you're familiar with the classical method, you know which topics I'm doing this year. :)

Here's a quick overview of what I'm studying this year. I'm not going to talk curriculum now, since that will come later, in the the subject by subject HF posts. For history this year, I'm doing Middle Ages. It's so sad for me to think that this is my last rotation! I'll never study Ancients again! This is my last chance with the Middle Ages! :) For science, I'm doing Earth Science. This being the last time for science just isn't as sad to me, especially since I'll probably have to take many of the sciences again in college. :) I'm still doing some grammar and vocabulary, and all my writing and literature is integrated with history. I'm still in Algebra 2, but I'm hoping to work through that pretty quickly so that I can start Geometry part way through the year. I'm also doing Rhetoric, having finished Logic last year. I'll also be starting Spanish, and continuing with Latin.

I started school on Monday, which means that I've done almost a full week of school. I've done everything but Spanish, since my book got ordered a bit late. It's supposed to arrive today, though, so I'll be able to start it up pretty soon.

Really, 10th grade isn't that different then 9th grade. It'll be a lot of the same curriculum, and a lot of the same schedule. In some ways, though, this will be my last year of totally homeschooling. In 11th grade, I can start taking classes at the community college, as part of Running Start. While I don't plan on going there full time, I'll still be a college student, which means I won't really be 100% homeschooled anymore. It's kind of bittersweet to think about.

Well, whatever happens this year, I'm glad to have had a pretty good start to the year!

Write On! Teen Writing Conference, Summer Reading, and School

I'm sorry for the long break on here. It's been a long time since I had the chance to write! Here is an update about what's been going on lately.

First of all, my origional plan to write a full length review of every book I read this summer is very unlikely to happen. While I will try to post as many of them as I can, I won't be able to post everything. The main reason for this is that I have a job editing a book that a friend of my father's is writing, and that will be taking up some time this summer.

I will still be doing as much reading as possible, but writing out the reviews here can't be my priority at the moment. I will still try to post on here two or three times a week, with book reviews, movie reviews, and updates about what I've been doing.

I will have a new tab at the top of my blog where I will list each book that I read this summer, and then I will link either to it's book review (if I have one written), or to it's Amazon page.

I will be pretty busy for the next few weeks, but I'll try to keep up with the blog as much as possible. I am going to a writing conference in my area which is geared for teens on Sunday. For local readers here is the website: http://www.writeonconference.com/. I am really looking forward to this event, since I haven't really gotten into the writing scene around here, though I know it is pretty substantial. We will also have some relatives from out of town staying with us for a few days later in the week.

In July, we will be taking a few trips to southern Washington, and to Oregon, one for a vacation in Seaside, and one for a John Mayer concert. I'll definitely write a post about that. I also have dance classes starting back up again once we get back. I am hoping to write a little more about dance soon.

And, of course, there is school. I am still not done with school, but I am hoping to do be done in a few weeks. That is the main reason I may be a bit scarce on here in the coming weeks. I am hoping to do as much school as possible so that I can be done for the year!

So, there you go. Expect some book reviews, and make sure to check the Summer Reading 2013 page to see what I've been up to and how many books I've written. My goal is to have the most in the county, in our library's teen summer reading program!