Author: thehungryrunnergirl

Camping

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I got back from the Ojai Valley School Outdoor Education trip (6 day camping) this past Friday. It was an interesting experience. I hiked up to Machu Pichu once, but the porters carried all my stuff so I hadn’t backpacked before.

We washed dishes with dirt, went to the bathroom in the wild, didn’t shower for 6 days…

But other than that, it was a fun trip. On the first day, we went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Since I was walking with the marine science teacher, she answered every question I had, which made it more fun and interesting!

On the second day, we backpacked about six and a half miles with a 25- pound backpack on my back and the camping began. I had bruises on my shoulders and my back but I felt accomplished after it all.

We played card games, hiked a lot, and saw many amazing vistas, it was so inspirational.

This is the OVS outdoor education website. Camping pictures will be up soon so check them out ☺

http://ovsoutdooreducationupper.wordpress.com/

Depressing Monday

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I hate Mondays. I get depressed because the weekend is over and I have to tolerate another 5 stressful days.

Here’s an interesting fact: the Ministry of Health in Japan compiled statistics on the suicide weekly rate. The statistics show that about 80.7 male and 27.3 female on average commit suicide on Mondays. On the other hand, the numbers go down on Saturdays to 53.5 male and 21.2 female. In Japan, this is known as the “Blue Monday Symptom”.

FYI: Japan has one of the highest suicide rates in the world.

More interestingly, people get myocardial infraction; higher blood pressure, as well as they get into car accidents more often on Mondays.

People in Japan feel a lot more pressure and stress than they should. They excessively sacrifice themselves in order to succeed. My impression of Japanese is that they don’t simply enjoy their lives, but work and try to be beneficial for others more than they should. I want them to be more easygoing and cheerful instead of thinking about committing suicide…

College

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I want to go to college right now. Like, right now.

So, I went on a college visit today. The college I went to is one of my top choices right now. It’s a Christian college, and campus is relatively small but people are very friendly and nice. I had a meeting with the track coach there, and met some of the runners. They are so friendly that they called me over and let me join the prayer before practice. There are some Olympians and nationally recognized runners there. I can totally imagine myself practicing with them and with the coach on their track. I can’t wait to run a bunch of meets and practice all year with my teammates and wear the same Nike team shirts and jackets.

I really can’t wait for college. I could go out during weekends whenever I want! I want to meet more people!

5 more months to go…

I just want to graduate.

You better sleep!

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In order to stay in shape and not get ill, it is extremely important to sleep. When I saw this headline, I was like, “well duh, sleeping is important. I know that.” But as I read into this interesting research outcome, I found very interesting facts so you better read through this!

Research shows that people who sleep 7 to 8 hours a day have the lowest obesity index than anyone else. Compared to people who get 5 hours of sleep, their obesity index is 50% lower, and for those of you who get 4 hours of sleep, 75% lower. That means, the less you sleep, the higher the tendency to get obese.

But why? The reason is because of the unbalance of the hormones reptine and ghrelin. Reptine is the hormone produced by fat cells that controls your appetite, and ghrelin produced by your stomach increases your appetite. So, if you don’t get enough sleep, reptine will decrease and ghrelin will decrease. People who get 5 hours of sleep compared to 8 hours of sleep, they have 16% less of reptine and 15% more of ghrelin, which means it, increases your appetite and prefer higher calorie foods.

Lack of sleep is one of the biggest enemies to a diet, but it’s not too late. After a reducing sleeping experiment, the examinees took 10 hours of sleep for two days and the hormone balance got back to normal. Also, the rate of craving food got 25% lower.

So sleep well to stay in shape.

Bibliography:
Satoru Tsubota. Japanese medical association, the sleeping society of Japan.

Pure love

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When I had the first meal of after being sick, white rice, I thought I was in heaven. I was like, “Thank you for letting me eat. Thank you so much.” That was one of the happiest moments in a long time.

I wasn’t feeling well since last Wednesday. My stomach was acting weird. I thought I was just tired so I ignored what it was telling me.

But finally, the pain really broke out this Monday. During lunch that day, I didn’t want to eat anything but I ate because I had to. But about half an hour later I started to feel nauseated and threw up all I had eaten. I usually never throw up. I hadn’t have thrown up since like 1st grade, so I realized that this virus is a really strong one. That night, I had a high fever. I tried to get changed, but I had no energy in me. I lost 5 pounds in 2 days and felt like a skeleton. I looked at myself in a mirror. It was disgusting.

On Thursday, my stomach finally let some food in. I ate impulsively. I was way too hungry. I couldn’t have been any happier. But I ate too much that I got nauseous again…

But, I’m getting better and better.

I once again realized that I love eating. I missed eating so much.

Shutter Island

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Gosh, it was such an unexpected ending. The producer of this movie must be super smart.

Shutter Island was directed and produced by Martin Scrosese in the United States in 2010. The movie is based on the novel by Dennis Lehane and is starring Leonardo Dicaprio as the U.S Marshal “Edward Daniels” who came to “Shutter” island, where a psychiatric facility is located, to investigate the case of a woman who had earlier managed to escape from the facility.

The plot of the movie was very confusing with a misleading ending, but it’s so worth seeing. I would highly recommend seeing this movie with you friends so you could discuss it afterwards, otherwise, you might not understand the message.

I strongly believe that this movie should be on your must-to-do –list !

Diet while studying?

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Every night, at around 11PM, I get really hungry. My stomach is craving food. I still manage to focus on my work, but sometimes it churns.

That means I’m burning calories right?

Surprisingly, every hour I study, I burn about 92.4825 calories, which is worth more than a Hershey’s special dark chocolate stick! So maybe I burn about 400 calories every night from studying!

But the thing is, some people can’t focus on their work if they’re too hungry. Your brain needs some sugar. So, it really depends on if you can tolerate hunger and focus on your work while studying!

Here is the equation of how many calories you burn. The calories depend on your gender, weight and age.

1kg of your weight that burns every 1 minute: 0.0295 (kcal)
correction factor =0.95 for woman, 1.00 for men (age range of 20-29)

So, if a woman of 55kg (120pounds) studied for an hour…

55(kg) x 0.0295(kcal) x 60(minutes) x 0.95 = 92.4825 kcal

AWESOME!

So don’t blame yourself for eating while studying.

Now, I’m kind of liking studying…

Just kidding.

Strange family

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So during this winter break, I went home back in Japan. It was so great to see my family and friends and I enjoyed hanging around with them.

Some of the days, I chilled at home getting yelled by my mom for sleeping in. My mom would come into my room and wake me up at 8 in the morning, and I yelled, “Mom, it’s only 8. Let me sleep.” And she would always say, “Everyone is up and done eating breakfast and I don’t want to wait for you to do your dishes. You know what? If you don’t get up now, then you’re going to clean your dishes, wipe the table and do garbage disposal.”

Gosh, chill out. It’s only 8.

Well, my dad wakes up at 3:30 AM and gets ready to golf every single morning. My mom wakes up at 5AM to cook breakfast and get ready for the day. So basically we’re all morning people.

More surprisingly, my dad goes to bed at 7PM so the curfew he sets is 6PM for me. I want to say, Dad I’m 17. Are you kidding me? But I would never say that because he is so strict and frightening when he gets angry. I could never disobey him. Yes, a typical Asian dad.

My mom and my little brother Hosei (it is a Spanish name but we pronounce it “Housei”, which is also a Japanese name) go to bed at 8:30.

At 9PM, my house is dark except for my room. And I get so scared by myself going downstairs because we all sleep upstairs.

Well, this is my family and I know they are little strange.

The Road

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Last night, I watched the movie “The Road” in my English class. It shows the human nature in a cruel way.

The movie is about the survival of one father and his son in a destroyed world. The reason why the world is demolished is not mentioned in the book or in the movie, but all the people are dead, the world is full of gray ashes, and buildings and trees are all non-existent.

The father and his son walk on the road for many days starving, sleeping outside.

During their journey, they face cannibals. People start to eat other people in order to survive, which show the human nature (“eat or be eaten”) and the desperate lifestyle. The father and his son see a lot of dead bodies chopped up from being eaten, which was very gruesome and dehumanizing.

The fascination of the movie is the relationship between the father and his son. His son was only the purpose for the father to live.

This movie makes me realize how happy we are to eat and have a warm place to sleep, and living in a normal world.

We have no life.

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The thing my friends and I do on Friday nights?

…Tetris battle.

Why is it so addicting?

I even play in my head all day. I imagine the blocks coming down and trying to fit them perfectly and that’s how I improve my tetris skills.

So basically, every time you win in a battle, you get a star, and if you collect 5 of them, then you rank up. My roommate (yrreskrap) and I are always battling and making fun of each other whenever we lose.

Ranking up system makes people more addicted to it.

But the good thing is, your energy (the time you can play) is limited. If your energy gets empty, you have to wait for a while until it gets full automatically. But, since I’m very addicted to it, I always begging my friends for energy.