春休み
Last week was Spring Break. It was interesting, indeed. For the most part, I spent it hanging out with my cousins, playing with baby goats, helping deliver more baby goats, watching Women of Ninja Warrior (oh, gosh, does that show make me want to cry, as I literally only understand one or two words every few sentences in Japanese. I have a long way to go.) making magnets and puking.
I really enjoyed playing with the baby goats and then delivering three more. My uncle has a farm (sort of) where he's had three adult goats for some time, and one of the females gave birth about a month ago. My cousins and I brought the two babies, Moose and Stripe, inside the house all one day and watched them battle with there barely-there horns. The baby goats are about the size of a cat and are super cute.
That day we were constantly checking on the other female goat (who was obviously pregnant) to see if she was delivering yet. And, of course, just as I was leaving to go back home, Mama started having her babies. So I stayed, of course, to help out.
If there's one thing I learned while helping with the delivery, it's that birth is a violent, violent thing. The baby goats just flopped out of their mom and hit the ground. One of the babies even landed on the other, and as it was only my thirteen year-old cousins and I at that moment, we were freaking out, not knowing what to do. Finally, Ryan got us some towels and blankets and we began cleaning them off. It was around ten at night and below freezing, and we were in a rush to get them dry before they became hypothermic. One goat, sadly, was much smaller than the other two and didn't move at all. We tried our best to warm him up and put him in front of his mama so that she'd lick him and help stimulate him. My uncle even put the little guy in warm water. Everyone really tried their best to help him out, but he didn't make it through the night. TT__TT
To be honest, I have no idea how baby goats manage to survive without the help of humans. In that cold, they'd have easily gotten ill, and, for the life of them, they couldn't find their mom's teet when it was squirting them in the face. Getting them to feed was the hardest thing of my freaking life. I literally had the nipple right on their lips, squirting the milk on them, and they just sat there like, "DUUUR." It was rather frustrating, because they have to eat within their first hour. It was a mad, mad rush.
It was also ridiculous because mama kept stepping on her babies, and we were all like, "NOOOOO." Not to mention she sat on them several times (and not in the "keeping warm" way). Naturally, she was also very tired, so she kept laying down when her babies had to feed. Again, it was madness, but it was so worth it. Those little goaties are so freaking cute. Their bleeting is so small-sounding and adorable. It's almost angering how they're so cute.
So, as I mentioned in my last post, I had three poems published. Pictures!
「空」and「夜空」
"Firestorm"
Yep. I wrote a companion haiku to "Firestorm" titled "Rice Field", but so far it is a piece of crap. Revising I shall do soon. I realized that I really enjoy writing haiku. I think I'm going to dedicate a whole notebook to them and write them in class when I'm bored, much as I used to do.
So, it looks like I'm not on track for a 4.0 this semester as I had so hoped. I have all As in four of my classes, but only a B in academic writing. I'm not quite sure how I'll manage to get an A in that class at this point in the semester. We have to write four essays in all; so far we've written two, both of which I got a B on. I'm annoyed, really. I thought I had done much better on my second essay than my first. If I want to ace the class, I'm going to have to get an A on the next two essays, which I wonder if I can even do at all, honestly. I want to punch that class in the face. I wish I would have spoken to my adviser about skipping it, then maybe I could have taken more classes that go towards either of my majors or minor this semester.
Well, at least I scored another above-perfect score on a Japanese test, again. The same grade as last time: fifty-two out of fifty. I feel like that's all I have going for me at the moment. XP
Well, that's it of my oh-so interesting life. Have a good week, everyone!
I really enjoyed playing with the baby goats and then delivering three more. My uncle has a farm (sort of) where he's had three adult goats for some time, and one of the females gave birth about a month ago. My cousins and I brought the two babies, Moose and Stripe, inside the house all one day and watched them battle with there barely-there horns. The baby goats are about the size of a cat and are super cute.
That day we were constantly checking on the other female goat (who was obviously pregnant) to see if she was delivering yet. And, of course, just as I was leaving to go back home, Mama started having her babies. So I stayed, of course, to help out.
If there's one thing I learned while helping with the delivery, it's that birth is a violent, violent thing. The baby goats just flopped out of their mom and hit the ground. One of the babies even landed on the other, and as it was only my thirteen year-old cousins and I at that moment, we were freaking out, not knowing what to do. Finally, Ryan got us some towels and blankets and we began cleaning them off. It was around ten at night and below freezing, and we were in a rush to get them dry before they became hypothermic. One goat, sadly, was much smaller than the other two and didn't move at all. We tried our best to warm him up and put him in front of his mama so that she'd lick him and help stimulate him. My uncle even put the little guy in warm water. Everyone really tried their best to help him out, but he didn't make it through the night. TT__TT
To be honest, I have no idea how baby goats manage to survive without the help of humans. In that cold, they'd have easily gotten ill, and, for the life of them, they couldn't find their mom's teet when it was squirting them in the face. Getting them to feed was the hardest thing of my freaking life. I literally had the nipple right on their lips, squirting the milk on them, and they just sat there like, "DUUUR." It was rather frustrating, because they have to eat within their first hour. It was a mad, mad rush.
It was also ridiculous because mama kept stepping on her babies, and we were all like, "NOOOOO." Not to mention she sat on them several times (and not in the "keeping warm" way). Naturally, she was also very tired, so she kept laying down when her babies had to feed. Again, it was madness, but it was so worth it. Those little goaties are so freaking cute. Their bleeting is so small-sounding and adorable. It's almost angering how they're so cute.
So, as I mentioned in my last post, I had three poems published. Pictures!
「空」and「夜空」
"Firestorm"
Yep. I wrote a companion haiku to "Firestorm" titled "Rice Field", but so far it is a piece of crap. Revising I shall do soon. I realized that I really enjoy writing haiku. I think I'm going to dedicate a whole notebook to them and write them in class when I'm bored, much as I used to do.
So, it looks like I'm not on track for a 4.0 this semester as I had so hoped. I have all As in four of my classes, but only a B in academic writing. I'm not quite sure how I'll manage to get an A in that class at this point in the semester. We have to write four essays in all; so far we've written two, both of which I got a B on. I'm annoyed, really. I thought I had done much better on my second essay than my first. If I want to ace the class, I'm going to have to get an A on the next two essays, which I wonder if I can even do at all, honestly. I want to punch that class in the face. I wish I would have spoken to my adviser about skipping it, then maybe I could have taken more classes that go towards either of my majors or minor this semester.
Well, at least I scored another above-perfect score on a Japanese test, again. The same grade as last time: fifty-two out of fifty. I feel like that's all I have going for me at the moment. XP
Well, that's it of my oh-so interesting life. Have a good week, everyone!