Im Awesome (at) Parkour!

Im Awesome (at) Parkour! IAP is in full swing, and I am having a blast! At MIT, the second semester doesnt start until February; instead, we use January to do internships, travel, take classes, and/or just have fun. Heres what Im up to this IAP (with headers inspired by me realizing that parkour easily fit the IAP acronym, and then spending a quarter of an hour trying to come up with cute names for everything else Im doing, too):well, mediocre might be a more accurate word choice. But thats unsurprising, considering ive been doing it for approximately two weeks! Parkour has been super fun and the two guys running it are very good teachers I love that they break down all the different motions we learn for us and explain why theyre useful, even when were just crawling across the floor01 Which will NEVER be just crawling to me again. Oh god, Im so sore for the warmup. Its definitely Real Exercise TM, which I wasnt expecting as much as I should have been, but thats honestly a bonus (living in EC means I really dont get much unintentional exercise) As we learn, the impressive-looking parts of parkour have started to seem more and more doable. Im really looking forward to learning more ways to jump over, onto, and off various objects! Im taking 18.02A, a version of multivariable calculus that starts in the fall and finishes in January. Its the realest class of all the classes Im in, which means psets, a midterm, a final, and daily lectures. The pace is definitely way faster in IAP, and having only one class is a weird feeling Im not keeping busy, but I cant relax either, and I sometimes find myself wishing that the semester would hurry up and come already, or that I could go back to break. With that said, learning math is super exciting!!!! Im 100% that nerd in the front row, excitedly texting my parents  I am now a master of div, grad, AND curl!!!which is to say,  Im having a real good time :D During the semester, if you live in a dorm with a dining hall (which I dont), its mandatory to have at least some sort of meal plan. This isnt true over IAP, so lots of people learn to fend for themselves by purposely choosing to go mealplanless and cook instead. Ive been fending for myself for a few months now, but I did take this opportunity to cook more than I would normally have time to do! In addition to my usual meals, I tried out a new chicken marinade (its the first one on Google, but wow, its really good!!), made key lime pie (and then angel food cake to use up leftover ingredients), and recreated the butterscotch fudge of my childhood. Ive been really impressed by how easy it is to make delicious, interesting food! Next up is  loukoumades, aka Greek02 When I looked these up so I could attach that Wikipedia link, I learned that theyre not just Greek! If youre a etymology nerd like me, click through to find out the cool source of the name. dough balls soaked in honey. MMmmmm glucose ?? Beginners ASL is one of the many non-credit classes you can take during IAP: its taught by two MIT students for three hours a week. Ive been wanting to learn ASL for a loooong time, but to be honest, Im not much of a self-starter, so I was super excited to sign up for this class. Turns out, of course, that learning a new language is hard! But its hard in a good way, the kind where you practice a little bit every day and slowly things get easier. Its really, really interesting to be learning a language thats so different from the ones Ive learned before, like Latin and French, which are full of verb and noun endings. In ASL, there is no conjugation; instead, you reduplicate or alter symbols, and use your body language and facial expressions, to convey specific meanings about what youre trying to say. This is definitely one of those activities, like brushing your teeth with your nondominant hand, that really stretches your brain and pushes it to be able to accept more than one way of d oing things (and in this case, more than one way of communicating information). Its a great feeling ^-^ Ive always looooooooooved to read, but I havent had nearly as much time to do so since the end of eighth grade, when I realized that if I wanted to kick butt academically, I might have to stop reading while my teachers were talking (shocker, I know). This IAP, Im getting back to reading in two ways: trying to read a little bit in the mornings after I wake up, and reading over lunch. During the semester, Im always busy, running at 100%, and when I have a free moment I want to be able to relax completely. Because Im less busy now, I can fill my free time with stuff that engages my brain! except, uh, so far Ive just been rereading book series I loved in my childhood. (Tamora Pierce: my icon, my savior, my idol, etc. etc.) But soon I will go to Dewey library and take out some interesting new nonfiction. (Tomorrow? Hopefully, tomorrow!) I was really intrigued by what I saw there when I visited in October, and I want go to take out a whole stack of books and learn a whole stack of things. I did a bunch of gift-knitting over the holidays, and it reminded me that I really like knitting! I learned when I was pretty young, so I didnt get into any of the fancy stuff. Now that Im older and probably wiser, I want to try all of that out. I borrowed a learn-to-knit book* and some needles and yarn from my mom and brought them back with me but since then, I havent actually sat down to knit. Like reading, its another one of those activities that takes place during my relaxing time, but actually requires a lot of my effort and attention, which means I often find myself just not doing it. I really want to learn new techniques, though, so Im going to try to set aside some time this week to start (it should help that a few recent stresses have resolved themselves, and Im less busy than Ive been). *its  this super cool one where you learn 63 different patterns, knit 63 different small squares, and then have a blanket!! I have no delusions of actually finishing a blanket, but the idea itself is very charming, and I like that each technique only requires a squares worth of commitment. So thats what Ive been up to. In between all of this, or perhaps vice versa, Ive been sleeping, talking, laughing, going out with friends, puzzle-solving (more on that another time!), Wikipedia-bingeing, and generally continuing to exist, as one does. Stay tuned to hear about my (many, many) plans for next semester and for those of you currently experiencing some frigid winter weather, I hope youre managing to stay safe and warm. 3 Which will NEVER be 'just' crawling to me again. Oh god, I'm so sore back to text ? When I looked these up so I could attach that Wikipedia link, I learned that they're not just Greek! If you're a etymology nerd like me, click through to find out the cool source of the name. back to text ?