Recap of Week 3

I got sick last week. I'm still recovering but feeling a lot better than last week. Last Monday, my stomach started hurting in the afternoon. My throat had been feeling a little bit irritated after eating a lot of BBQ the weekend before. And then of course, I decided to fry dumplings for dinner and then it just all went downhill from there. My throat started hurting a lot, had a slight fever, body ached, and was just generally not feeling well the entire week. So I spent a lot of time last week just sleeping. I skipped out on all my non-essential classes. I would get up in the morning, eat rice porridge, and go back to sleep. This would make me feel better in the afternoon. I was still able to do homework in the evenings when I felt more awake. Thursday was especially bad though. I went to Vaden but they said it wasn't strep throat and didn't give me any antibiotics. I even went back on Friday and another doctor claimed that I have the flu even though I really don't think my symptoms were indicative of the flu at all. I even got a flu shot a couple of weeks ago. Anyhow, I managed to keep up with classes and teach for Splash.

My brother and cousin came for Splash! I think they had fun which is good. I took them up the Hoover Tower during Sunday lunch. Apparently, it's free even for my guests. I mean, it's only $2 for adults and $1 for kids under 12 but still, it adds up if you have a big family or a lot of friends. I taught origami and stamp collecting again. I swear some kids are super spoiled and come from places where they always have everything they want. I had a limited amount of paper for my second origami class because the first one used them all and this one kid was like "is there any way you can get more?" even though there was clearly still enough paper for everyone. And then when we were folding this ring thing that needed 8 pieces of paper, she kept wanting to get more pink paper even though there wasn't any more. And some kids just can't wait for their turn to be helped. Don't they understand that they're not entitled to always be helped first?? The girl mentioned above didn't have the patience to finish making the ring and spent the rest of the class drawing on the board. While I'm at it, I feel sorry for some of these homeschooled kids. I'm sure they're learning a lot more academically than public school kids but they would not survive in a public school since they're used to having things done their way. You learn a lot of social skills by going to school. School is not just for academics. In fact, I think MBA students would admit that a big part of their motivation to do an MBA is to network.

So being sick and doing Splash all translates to being behind in studying. I've kept up with all the homework that was due but I didn't managed to do anything beyond that. I think grad classes have more outside reading and you're really expected to do more than just the prescribed exercises. I need to go to the library again and find some good reference books for my hydrology class. I am so lost in that class. The next homework involves coding. Not only am I not sure I understand the hydrological concepts, I'm not sure I understand the finite difference method that we're supposed to use to solve the problems. Not to mention my Matlab skills are still very limited.

Other news: I'm going to see Rent (the musical) in SF on Wednesday! Our dorm got tickets so a bunch of us are going. I'm excited. I saw the movie in LSC back in sophomore year and liked it a lot. I hear the musical is a lot better! And now that I've lived in NYC, things should make more sense. The New York Times make so much more sense now. Before I would just ignore all references to neighborhoods but now I have a much better sense of all the references.

This Saturday, the MIT Club of Northern California is organizing a bike trip. This sounds really cool but I don't know if I'm going to make it. I might have to do some major studying...