So…yeah…

it’ll probably be more or less inactive unless I go travel or something…

But yeah, just stating the obvious…

The two of them are turning 18 today, and I hope that God will bless both of you immensely on this special day!!! ^^

God Bless!!

~ Rin

As of two hours ago, I have just completed my orders for textbooks for this semester.

It’s RIDICULOUS how many different sites there are to buy the books from!! Just the bookstores in town alone, there’s THREE of them. And then I had to compare them with amazon.com, textbooks.com, half.com, etc.

Which by the way, if you’re currently a college student or soon to become one, those two are a couple of good sites to look for cheaper textbooks.

(and yes, orithath and elanas, I DO in fact realize that I cheated on this post because I posted just about the same thing on DA).

~ Rin

I’m so grateful to God that all of you are in my life!! ^^

God Bless all of you!!!!! ^^

~ Rin

I got ALL A’s!!!! ^^

All glory to God for His grace and mercy that he has shown me all semester long while I went through my first semester as a SIUC student!!

Thank you to all of you for praying me through these difficult times of hard studying!!

I know I couldn’t have made it through the semester without you guys!

I took the Speech Communications final today, and while I don’t know my results yet, it shouldn’t be too bad. The test itself was on 25 questions, and I finished in 15 minutes. So…yeah, I’ll leave it to you to decide whether or not it was easy…

I’ll update you guys as soon as I find out what I got.

~ Rin

Well, as it turned out… I had been really nervous about this one, so I got up early this morning to study some more. I even studied in the car on the way there. And NO, I wasn’t studying and driving at the same time (that’d be dangerous (and pretty dumb…)). My dad was the one who drove us to campus because he had a meeting with some people at Starbuck’s in the Student Center (lucky…).But a friend of mine treated me to ice-cream at the Student Center. We shared a double scoop, waffle cone, mint chocolate chip (my second favorite ice-cream flavor) for only $2.70. And it was huge!!!!! It was fun (random cravings for ice-cream or sherbet in the winter always seem to come in at some point…) ^^

I get to my class at Lawson (a few minutes late…>_<), and our professor tells us to pick up the blue sheet of paper (that he folded and stapled shut) that has our names on it that he had put on the desks. Funny thing is, the first one I looked at happened to be mine, so I took it, and went to my seat. He told us to sit down and open them all at the same time, saying that “this is a once in a lifetime chance. you have a minute and a half to decide what you’re going to do”.

So, I open the paper, and it said “To Ariel Loh, your current grade in this class is an A, 95%. You have the option to not take the final. If you do not take the final, your grade will remain the same. If you agree to this, sign on the line below. Have a good winter break.” Then our professor said, “If you take me up on my offer, you can just sign the paper, put it up here, fill out a class evaluation sheet, and then you can get out of here.”

I was like “0.O! are you serious?!?!?!?!??!?!?”

Signed the paper, filled out the evaluation, and left the class with a 95% as my passing grade. WITHOUT having to take my final!!!!!!!!!! I’m SUPER HAPPY with the way things turned out!!!!!!!!!

Praise God and all glory to Him for His awesomeness in making my finals this semester go so well!!!!! ^^

Only one more to go!!!!!!!!

~ Rin

I’m passing the class with a 91% (I got an 83% on the final exam)!!!

And while that’s not as good as I had originally wanted, I am SO happy that I did that well (especially considering the fact that I guessed on quite a few of the questions…)!!

All glory to God!! Through Him, ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE!!!!!!!!!

Well, so far so good….

Haha, I MIGHT actually finish my first semester of college with all A’s!!! ^^

~ Rin

Here’s how my first day went:

Got up at around…6 am because my first exam was at 7:50.

It was the pre-calc final, and it was going to be in the Engineering building, in a computer lab. The “test” is actually a calculus level test, so to get “100%” for the pre-calc final, we had to get “60%” of the calculus test. There were two sections: trigonometry and college algebra. In order for our grade on the final to count as a 100% for pre-calc, we had to get 60% on EACH section.

I finished the test in about 35 minutes, and I got a 64% on trig, and an 80% on algebra!!

The next exam was the English final. My hands were hurting for AGES after this final was over. We started at 10:10 am, and I wrote all the way till 11:50. In that total of 1 hour and 40 minutes, I handwrote 4 pages for the analysis paper. I think I did well on it, but we’ll see…I’ll keep you guys updated as to the results (once I find out what they are, anyway…XP)

The last exam of today was the Geography final…Please pray that that went well, because I studied a lot for it, but there were a few things that I just couldn’t remember…I went over it three times, and I STILL finished really early (in about…50 minutes out of the 2 hours that we were given to take it). So…I’m praying that that went well. I’ll let you guys know what I got as my final Geography grade…

All right, Day One’s over, I get a break on Tuesday, and I have only TWO more to go!!

By God’s grace, I’ll make it through!! ^^

~ Rin

Taken from our front door. You can see Sephy's pawprints...

The "forest" on the other side of our yard. Looks cool, doesn't it?

The side of our "balcony/deck", I think the vines and the snow are a nice contrast ^^

Unfortunately, as a result, we didn’t get to go to church…

Phooey XP

But I got a lot of studying done as a result, so I guess it wasn’t ALL bad.

~Rin

*gulps* I emailed my instructors earlier this week as to where my grades are at prior to the final…

So, here are the results (the only one that I couldn’t get was SPCM…)

ENGR 111B (pre-calc)- 94%

GEOG 103-93%

ENGL 101- my English instructor didn’t actually give me a number, but she said that since out of four papers that I did, my grades were “A+, A, A+, and A+”…I don’t really have anything to worry about there.

ECON 302i- 95%

Next week is finals…I’m so nervous about it, but by God’s grace, I’ll do well on it!

Thank you everyone for praying for me! ^^

Getting to see Voyage of the Dawn Treader tomorrow should help alleviate some of the stress ^^ I hope they don’t butcher the movie too badly…

~ Rin

And guess what? God was faithful AGAIN!!!!!!!!

My pre-calculus teacher, which I have his class from 8-10 am every week, Monday to Thursday, suddenly announced that he’s canceling class tomorrow and Thursday!! In other words, I get to rest more and have a couple more hours to “un-stress” myself in the morning!!

Praise God!!! ^^

And let’s just say, I already have what I’m going to be doing during that time more or less planned out. God gets priority since he gave me this break in the first place, so I’m going to spend that time having my quiet-time! ^^ I’m already looking forward to it.

Of course, if I have some time left over, I’ll have to use it to practice for Jr. Fest (especially since my teacher just had me change songs a few days ago, and I don’t even have the full music yet. I currently only have the first page to work with, and it already looks hard…T-T)

In desperate need of your prayers!!!

~ Rin