Hello, my name is Tamar and I am eighteen years old and senior at River Falls High School in Wisconsin. I would like to tell you about myself, my family, my work, my town and my school.
      I was born on September 12, 1985. I have five people in my family, my mom, my dad and two brothers. My oldest brother, Lamar, is twenty and goes to the University of Minnesota. He is about 6'3" with curly black hair. He likes to play golf, practice the guitar and party at college. To pay for college, he works at a department store and we sometimes get discounts off of clothing. He lives in a college house in Minneapolis/St.Paul, Minnesota. My little brother Payton is five years old and loves Godzilla. He has short strawberry blond hair and likes everything except vegetables. He likes to play baseball, golf and watching Godzilla movies. He is a kindergartener in school (one year before first grader). My mom works at a company called West Group as a data analyzer. She is about my height, 5'5", and has short brown hair. She likes working outside planting flowers and landscaping. My dad works for the United States Postal Service and is one of those tall dark and handsome men. He enjoys working and going to places that are new and unfamiliar. In his spare time he is also a writer and has a book called "The Book of Knowledge" that he writes in. At his job he is a supervisor of his department. We live out in the country, five miles from town in our house. We have two dogs, one little one and one big one. Their names are Matayla and Nakuma. They're so cute. Every night, the little one sleeps in my bed with me. My room is one of the smallest rooms in the house. It is purple and white. In my room I have a TV, a bed and a chair. It is small, but it is cozy.
      I live in River Falls in Wisconsin. My town is small; about thirteen thousand people live in my town. There is one movie theater, one river, three parks and about six bars and churches. We do not have a mall or shopping center. If I want to go to a mall, I would have to drive about thirty minutes into Minnesota, the next state over to the west. During the summer I like to hang out with my friends. We like to go to the parks, the movie theater and to the beach when it is nice out. Sometimes we ride bikes or rollerblade. My school is in town and everyday I have to drive to school. It takes me about fifteen minutes to get to school in my car. School starts at 7:30 and ends at 2:35. At my school there are 2,000 students. In my senior class there are about 250 kids alone. During the day I have five classes: Japanese (my favorite), English, French, Astronomy, and Choir. In my Japanese class there are 15 students, and 20 in my Astronomy and French class. However, in my English class there are 30 students and 80 in my choir class. My Japanese, English and French classes are all eighty minute classes. My Astronomy and Choir classes are both 40 minutes. Long huh!? After English I go out for lunch with my friends. We could stay at school for lunch but since it is getting nice out we usually drive around and get something to eat at Subway, McDonalds or Dairy Queen. We started school in September of 2003 and I graduate school in May of 2004!! I'm looking forward to graduation High School, but I'm not really looking forward to college. High School was kind of easy and I'm scared that college is going to be really hard, and I'm going to flunk out.
      After I get out of High School I plan to go to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Madison is the capital of Wisconsin and is a big college. It is about three hours away from where I live now. At Madison, I plan to study Japanese and hopefully in two years I will go to Japan and live for a year. I'm planning on living in a dorm there and hopefully I will make new friends there, I would like to live in an apartment, but I don't think I will have the funds for it. Until then I hope to have my friends from High School come down and visit me.
      After school I usually go to work. I work about ten minutes from my school at the San Pedro Café. There I waitress, bartend, host, expedite and help severs as a servers' assistant. For waitressing, I order peoples food, get them drinks and bring their food out; being a servers' assistant, I just help out the servers with their drinks and food If they are too busy. Bartending, I make drinks for the waitresses and people sitting at the bar. When hosting, I seat people and clean and expediting I just bring food out for the waitresses. The people at my work make it fun for me. I usually work about four days a week. When I am serving on Saturday and Sunday mornings I usually make about one hundred dollars from tips, but the night people make even more money! At my work the employees get half off their food and free dinks. I have a great job.
      Every year my family and I go on a family vacation. Last year, however, I went to California with my grandma and grandpa to see my aunt. Last spring I had the opportunity to go to Japan for USA Spring Camp 2003, but my mom wouldn't let me go because she was worried about SARS in Japan, so she wouldn't let me go. So instead, I went out to California. My aunt's name is Jody, and she is 45 years old. In California it was nice weather all the time, eighty to ninety degrees everyday. The first day I got to California, my grandma, my grandpa, and I ate all night with my aunt and uncle. We had cheese that my grandma brought with her from Wisconsin and wine from California. Then the days passed and everyone in the house got sick. We visited the emergency room at least three times while we were there. While we were sick we went to the ocean and had a picnic and went shopping. They had the cutest clothes in the stores. Then the next day we went to a theme park where it was extremely hot. It was so hot that I got a heat stroke and got even sicker. A few days later my aunt, my uncle and I went horseback ridding. It was a two hour long ride. We went up into a mountain and It was green and tropical. We ran the horses too, it was terrifying. I had never run a horse before and I almost fell off. But when we reached the middle of the mountain, it was a surreal beauty. Everything was a plush mint green color. The sun was straining through the canopy, and a gentle fog surrounded you. The thin trees were covered in the light green moss and shimmered from the sun reflecting off of the dew drops. It was breath taking. I was sad the day that we went back to Wisconsin because it was cold and snowy and I hate cold weather.
      In the future I hope to be an accomplished person. By that I mean someone with a good education and a good job that I love. Part of my dream job would be to travel and communicate with others. I plan to keep studying Japanese and French in college and maybe take up Spanish and use these languages as part of my job. I would like to be a flight attendant or maybe an interpreter of some sorts. But I might change my mind from now until then. I just hope that I can use different languages as part of my job. I don't want to marry until I'm out of college and until I have a comfortable job and income. And I definitely don't want to have kids until after I find a suitable husband. I would like to live in the city as part of my single life, but not as part of my married life. I would not like to raise my child in a city, because children are impressionable and I don't to have to tempt them with bad people around them, or as little of them as possible. I hope to marry rich, now that sounds terrible, I know. I would just like to be able to give my children all that they need and want.
      I plan on visiting Japan again this summer with my friend Ashley. We plan to go stay with some friends and travel around Japan. I am looking forward to it. She is hilarious. We are going to stay for about a month and then come home. After we get home I plan to hang out with my friends and get ready for college. Wish me luck!