New News of August 27

--Watibai 30 Driaji--

Life news
Ah yes, school--remember my June post when I said I would be taking a Japanese class over the summer? That started in early July and ended mid-August. It was fun, the teacher was good, and the class wasn't as hard as I had expected. In fact, I ended up with an A--not bad for a first college class! So...

Shibaraku desu nee. Dakara koko de kaku koto ga dekimasen deshita. Totemo isogashikatta n desu. Soshite, tokidoki wasuremashita... Dewa, sugu natsu ga owarimasu kara, kongetsu o tanoshimi ni shite imasu. Jitsu wa, kongetsu no juuninichi dekakeru hazu desu. Watashi to haha wa Ooi no Amerika no tokoro e ryokoo suru tsumori desu. Zehi sore o tanoshimi ni shite imasu kedo, juuichigatsu ni mada ryokoo ni imasu. Juugonichi juuichigatsu goro kaeru tsumori desu.

Translation:
Long time no see. I have been unable to post. I was very busy. And, sometimes I just forgot... Anyway, summer will end soon, so I look forward to this month. In fact, on the 12th I should be leaving. My mother and I are planning to travel all around America. I'm really looking forward to it, but by November I will still be on the trip. I'm planning on returning around the middle of November.

Song Quest
Ever since last July, I've been exploring the Internet for music and buying it off places like Rhapsody and iTunes. But it was the last three or so months when I've really done a lot of that. In fact, today I bought somewhere around 45 songs online! Some of those songs weren't even available a few months ago, so I was really surprised when one day (today) I just discovered a whole bunch of them on iTunes... And by the way, contrary to popular belief, you don't have to have an iPod to buy music off of iTunes. I don't have one, yet I was able to do so...

Nowadays, every month I do something called a song oracle. It's my own creative means of divination, and it's really easy in a way. I put my MP3 player on shuffle mode and concentrate on the first five songs it plays. In those five songs I look for messages and predictions about the designated time ahead. Sometimes these messages get rather interesting. Occasionally I get songs that remind me of earlier occurences, songs that appeared in past song oracles, and yet other songs that literally scare me with the warnings or messages they give... Anyways, I did one of these just a few hours ago, for the coming month. (I mean Galactic months--see one of my first posts here for info on that system.) Usually I do these at the end of the month anyway, and if you look at the tiny blue text at the top of this post you'll see that it's the 30th of Driaji--the last day in Driaji. Next month is called Soruji, which is often associated with the winds of change. And indeed, the first song that popped up in that month's song oracle talked a lot about change and preparing for what's ahead... How appropriate! And, one of the songs I just bought online today appeared in the oracle--that was a surprise! One of the songs in this month's oracle was one that also appeared in the very first oracle I did, back in last December. Another song in it was about money, and how it can be important but not something to be obsessed with...

My Own Songs
I wrote two and a half songs since my last post here. I shall describe them, since there is quite a bit to say about them...
Latria--This was written sometime in mid-June. It's the first song I wrote in a language other than English. It's in that elusive language I may have told you about--the one I sometimes tell people I made up but really comes from other planets I may have mentioned... Anyways, on one of those planets is a legend about this special musical instrument called the latria, which is what this song is about. The latria is composed of a shallow bowl or other dish shape with a short pole attached. This often has crystals on it, and in fact the instrument is made of materials best connected to magic. This is because the latria doesn't really make any sound, but it does produce music--that which is only created by magical inspiration. It's a sense of music, is all. So therefore it is more like a magical tool (in fact, it's played with a "wand") and its music is more like a spell than anything... but still immensely beautiful.
Kalena--The title comes from the above language, and a couple of verses are in that language (which is called Latori, for future reference), but the rest of the song is in English. This song is really neat though, as it's about a place. One of the planets I mentioned above has a moon called Kalena, which is shrouded in a thick blue fog. This fog pushes everything that enters it outward, but inside is land--and even life. The environment there is beautiful and pretty much perfect--so much that its few inhabitants are pretty much immortal. Of course this is all based off of legend, but it's still a beautiful song nevertheless in my opinion.
Celia--This song isn't quite complete--I still have a couple of verses left to write. I wrote a couple of its verses today, and started the song on August 10. There are two unique things about this song. First of all, it's in Japanese (Heh, it was first written the night before my last day of that class I was talking about). Second, it's written specifically for my Pokemon fanfic. Celia, who you may have heard of if you read the last few posts, is really the subject of this song. It's meant to be sung by Kelsey, and it's part of the beautiful ending I talked about earlier for the story. So it makes a lot of references to the curse Kelsey was under, and the hopes she has for the future. I sure look forward to finishing this song!

Pokemon Fanfic
Speaking of the fanfic, I recently put another character into the story: Suneora. What's really unique about this girl is that she comes from one of those planets I mentioned in the Song section, so her first language is Latori (see the song section) as well! She's so funny because of the way she interacts with her Pokemon (for example, one of them is always correcting her grammar errors, and another always speaks in riddles), yet she's really a touching character. On that planet she came from (which is called Orenya), magic is widely believed in and thus is everywhere, so many people who live there have a pretty good talent in that area. However, Suneora seemed to be the black sheep there, as she really didn't seem to have any of that talent. So she just mysteriously appeared on Earth one day and became a Pokemon trainer there.

FicPokemon Changes
I've made a few changes to some of the Pokemon I created...
-Falcry, Orcali, Tekkite, Bettagon, Mimequin, Yingon, Yangon, Cleorse, and Gallipee are gone... but not forgotten.
-Sludgebob and Chinchai have had appearance changes, and a few others are in need of one as well.
-Katanya, Teascoop, and Aquazura now have two elements--their second one is Energy.
-Kanasama's name was changed to Samakura, and its appearance was altered as well to have more of a cherry-blossom theme.
-Peridite's name was changed to Delamour and now looks more like a dove. If I'm criticized on giving a Pokemon a French name, I'll just point to Gardevoir.
-I created Diamos, a rock fairy Pokemon whose appearance is uncertain at the moment...

Leaf Green Progress
My next goal is to make all 60-something of my Pokemon gain at least five levels, or up to 10 if they learn any neat attacks by level 50. So some Pokemon like my Ninetales have had it easy--they just had to get from level 40 to level 45. In other cases, my Snorlax was initially at level 41, so I got him to level 46. My poor Raticate was initially at level 40, but since she learns Endeavor at level 50 I had to get her there to learn that attack. And I train my Pokemon in private training sessions, and I even planned out a random order for them to train. The first Pokemon on the list was my Dragonair, and last will be my Machamp. After he gets to his appropriate level (48 I believe), I can finally battle Blaine for the Volcano Badge! Anyways, so far I'm still less than halfway done, after two-and-a-half months at it... Now I have over 200 hours of playtime, and almost 20 Pokemon have done their training. I just finished Snorlax's training, and Arbok's after that, so now I'm on Pinsir. She has to get to level 49 to learn Swords Dance, and she started at level 40... She's now at level 43, so she just learned Submission.

I will have more news soon...