To day is Veterans Day 2011, or 63 as I’m going to call it. Nerds will figure it out.

Today’s task for my 30 Day Challenge was to give myself a testicular exam. This has been one of the easiest challenges yet. I learned a little today, I didn’t know that testicular cancer was so common among my age range. I also learned how to do a self exam and then realized I’ve been doing this for years. I learned that I was more at risk if I had undescended testicles as a baby. I didn’t know whether I had or not, so I sent my mom a text message to find out. She hasn’t answered me yet.

My professional opinion, after playing with my balls, I don’t have anything to worry about today.

Last night, after Rose left I churned out over 2,000 words for my novel. This is great because I don’t think I’ll be doing much writing today or tomorrow. I have guests staying at my place and I need quiet and as few distractions as possible. Sunday, however, I plan on hitting 6,000 words like I did last weekend.

School was a mess today. There was an assembly for the 8th grade students to celebrate them choosing the track they’ll study for four years. I went to a bit of it and then gladly stepped out to teach a lesson. In the lesson, I was stern. I guess it had been a long week and I ended up snapping at a student.

I learned that Ukrainian teenagers think their life is just as hard as American teenagers and the world will never understand them. I laughed. If they think being a teenager is hard, I can’t wait until they have to call the shots.

I also learned that the nationalized testing system in Ukraine has some serious flaws. For example, every year the Ministry of Education produces about 30 versions of a test for a subject. Then, these tests are available to the public. Students buy the test books and memorize all the questions and their answers for the tests. They aren’t, as far as I can tell, testing knowledge so much as they’re testing the ability to memorize questions and answers.

Now it’s time to kick back and try to enjoy my weekend.