Who the hell is Terestar?

I live in a Toronto suburb known as Brampton. But really, I'd consider it its own city since there are over 500,000 residents. But, I was also raised by my adoptive parents from Germany, and because of them I also spent a year of my life there during 10th grade in the city of Düsseldorf however my parents are from East Germany, specifically the city of Leipzig. They migrated to Canada in the early 1990s along with a lot of other family members after some had already moved to the US/Canada and roughly nine years after that on October 21st, 1999, I was born and adopted by them about a month after.

What kind of life experience does this 23 year old man have anyways? Well, let me share that with you.

So first off, I am a teacher. Specifically, I teach High School students from Grade 9 to 11 and I mostly teach CS however I do teach other stuff as well because the school is rather understaffed. I love it though and I care about my students a lot as I really haven't forgotten what it's like to be in their position. I myself struggled a lot in school, not in terms of grades (academically speaking, I was considered fairly gifted) but in terms of behaviour. I got mistreated a lot by teachers back then and now as a teacher, I guess part of it is trying not to replicate the mistakes my teachers made all those years ago.

What else? Well, I was born into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints however you may better recognise it as the Mormon Church or LDS and my family were pretty strict with all the rules - no drinking, no swearing, no smoking/drugs, etc. But by the time I was 19 I had left the Church after previously refusing to serve a mission despite the fact I was already called to serve. I had been called to the Ohio Columbus mission and I was expected to serve two years from 2018-2020 but as you can see that did not happen. (Yes, I was being called to Ohio of all places).

I also have this disease known as cancer. Yeah, having cancer at this age sucks a lot but I think I'm making the most of it. I am becoming more active on JetPunk as a form of a distraction from all the things going on in my life right now. Right now, things have been going fairly well. Of course I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a physical and mental toll on me but also, I think it's important to have a more positive outlook on the situation as I think that's going to be the key ingredient in getting me out of this mess. If my Mormon past taught me anything is that you can never give up no matter how bad things get.

Well now that the depressing stuff is out the way, let's brighten the mood by talking about vacation! I have been on those before.

My favourite vacation has to be the trip to Hong Kong with my husband and his parents (his country of origin, and yes I am already married. Crazy stuff). I was initially hesitant to go, but they were all extremely insistant that I went so, I did during Summer of 2019. It was awesome! I got to see a lot of famous sights even though I was admittedly very overwhelmed by the large amount of people in every direction.

Another interesting vacation I had was to Idaho. No, Idaho itself is not interesting besides for mountains but, I had the opportunity to go to an open house temple gathering there. As for those unnaware, when Mormon temple is opened for the first time or is opened again after renovation, they have this thing called an "openhouse" where members of the public can have a tour for about 2-3 weeks. I can't remember the exact city for the life of me since this was *years* ago but I have not forgotten the very weird vibe of the place. I mean, this is where people get married and are "sealed" forever. But I might discuss other weird Mormon things in a future blog for those who are interested.

Well this is a JetPunk blog after all so let's talk about that. Although I haven't had my account for too long yet (only since November last year) but I've used JetPunk a bit longer than that though I didn't have an account. I was also a pretty avid user of sites such as Sporcle and Seterra. I remember using these sites as a bored University student in need of something to get through incredibly boring lectures. I think it comes from my general interesting in quizzing since I was young. I loved shows such as Who Wants to be a Millionaire, Jeopardy, The Price is Right and the Weakest Link. I'll never forget being able to get an answer right that none of my family or anyone on the show got. The answer was "red spider" but I can't remember what the question was.

My main interests are CS, Quizzing, Video Games and Eurovision.

If anyone must know, my top video games are Pokémon Platinum, the Ace Attorney series and the Papa Louie series! My favourite Eurovision song is Wild Dances by Ruslana. And I can program in several languages but the ones I use most often are Phython (as that's the main language schools here teach) and Java (for my own personal projects).

Well that about does it for my first blog. Be sure to go and play some of my quizzes!