School's out; More time for memes!

Ms M has tagged me for a meme, like more than a week ago, and now I'm finally going to finish it!

Here it is, and I shall tag these 8 bloggers in return: (this is exciting because I might actually know of eight bloggers who also know of me! woo!)
Nancy at Se Hace Camino El Andar
Kelly at Ogretmen [oops, she's traveling. for later, then. :)]
other Ms M at NY Teacher
Ms X at Unaccountable Talk
Miss B at In Pursuit of Happily Ever After
Jen at Quarter Life Crisis
Sam at Clean up on Aisle Life
Mr Lawrence at Get Lost, Mr Chips

The rules are 1. Let others know who tagged you. 2. Players start with 8 random facts about themselves. 3. Those who are tagged should post these rules and their 8 random facts. 4. Players should tag 8 other people and notify them they have been tagged.

And here are the 8 random facts. Some of them are in response to other people's facts, and some of them you may already know. Are they supposed to be eight things you don't already know? Meh, whatever. Hope it's not too boring....

1. I am a lefty. My hand stays upright, and the whole side of my hand gets inky and messy. Especially when writing on the overhead. Using manual can openers is really difficult if I think too much. I believe that I use them upside down or inside out or something. And good god, remember those scissors in elementary school? The green lefty ones never, EVER worked. So I suppose out of survival instinct, I quickly learned to cut right-handed. I can cut well with either hand now, but the detail work does require left-hand power. Oh, and I play baseball right-handed.

2. I have never smoked a cigarette, or anything else, for that matter. Not even once, not even to try it. Never wanted to, either.

3. I once saw a blue frog. We were canoeing on a peaceful little river in...Michigan perhaps? Not sure. We all saw this little blue and white froggy sitting on a rock, and figured it was a toy or something. But then it hopped away and we were all, wow! a blue frog!

No one has ever believed about it, which is frustrating.

4. I'm adopted. I'm quite sure I've mentioned it here before, but just in case you didn't know, now you do. :) My family tree is rather complicated, not only with birthparents and half-siblings, but also with stepparents and that. I don't call anyone my "real" parents; that really bugs me. Since I've been lucky enough to have met my birthmom when I was seven, I have sort of compartmentalized everyone and their title, so to speak. So my mom and dad are my mom and dad, and my birthparents are birthmom and birthdad (I met him when I was fifteen). Nobody's "real" or "fake." And add me to the ranks of people who are irritated when the media always mentions someone's "adopted son or daughter," rather than just "son or daughter." Like, that really doesn't have anything to do with anything. Nobody on either side of that relationship thinks it's fake, so the media shouldn't harp on that either.

5. My first road trip was to Yellowstone, with my dad and brother, when I was around eight or nine. My first trip out of the country was to Vancouver, BC around the age of ten. I lost all three of my rings that I wore at the time. My first trip to a non-English speaking country was to Mexico (Mazatlan) in eighth grade. Later that year, I left the continent for the first time and went to France and England for three weeks. I've been hooked on travel ever since. In two weeks, I'll be (cross your fingers) visiting a new country *and* a new continent! Very exciting. If I could travel all the time, I would.

6. My favorite class or subject in school was always science. In elementary school, I'm sure that part of the appeal was that we didn't do science very often and it always involved hands-on activities and fun experiments. For example, I remember one very clearly in either third grade or fifth grade: we had a light bulb, a battery, a wire, and a big blob of blue clay. We had to complete the circuit using the clay (although I would not have called it completing the circuit, just 'making the light go on'). I don't remember if mine worked, but I do remember having a great time with it.

In high school, I was lucky to have fantastic teachers for biology, chemistry and physics. I worked harder for those classes than I did in any other class in school, and though my grades were solid Bs or B+s, I was most proud of myself for them. I aced the stoichiometry test in chem, where you have to figure out the numbers of molecules in reaction equations. (This is possibly ironic because I've never liked math in regular math classes. Science math, however, is totally different and acceptable. Sorry, math teachers. :)) Then in physics, which was a *very* tough class, two girls and I made the awesomest lab report. We were given this long problem about a pulley and a bucket of nails and two nincompoops. The task was probably to figure out the velocity of all the different times it went up and down. Anyway, we had such fun with it--we created a comic strip! We gave them names and made the one hit the other one, and gave them an ambulance at the end. I was endlessly amused. Sadly, we never made copies of it, so I never saw it again after we turned it in.

In college, I had two quarters of first-year chem with a very dull prof, but the last quarter of that and the first quarter of organic chem were much better. Organic chem really kicked my ass. That class was one of the few that I visited the prof during office hours for help. And then, after studying really hard and getting some help/reassurance from the prof, I earned an A on a test! I was really proud. In the class, I might have somehow pulled a B, probably a low one, but I decided to let it go after the one quarter. A week into the second quarter of o-chem, I dropped the course and took no more science after that.

7. I've been an English teacher for three years, but I hating writing in school. It was a pain in the butt and I never felt like I did a good job. It wasn't until college, when I had to write many papers for every class my last two years, that I realized I enjoyed the process of writing and producing a good piece of writing. My favorite part is to get a draft done and then rip it apart in revision and editing. Something about fixing is so satisfying! With all that practice, I became quite a good writer, though you wouldn't really know it from reading this silly blog. :)

8. I'm an extremely picky eater. I call myself a vegetarian, because I don't eat meat (no, not fish either--that's dead animal and therefore meat), but there are plenty of vegetarian things I don't eat either. And it's not a moral issue, it's just dislike or unwillingness. Meat grosses me out, although I would never ever lecture anyone else about eating it. More power to you, really. There are a whole lot of things I don't eat (notice I'm not just saying I don't like them; I really will not eat them), but the things I do eat, I eat a lot. I don't starve by any means. I eat a lot of salad, potatoes, edamame, cereal, cheese, yogurt, and of course I heart dessert (except cheesecake, yuck), especially if it's chocolate.