Chiles Mini Mu

This year's Chiles Mini Mu wasn't boring at all. The questions were really easy (on the first test anyway). Deerlake Middle School was dominating! In every single Power Point slide for the awards, Deerlake was always either half or the majority.

The first test was a theme of "Ratatouille." It was pretty easy. The second test was harder. The theme was "The Incredibles." There were 30 questions, each correct answer is worth 5 points, a blank answer is 1, and an incorrect answer is 0. So, if you skip every single question, you can still get a score of 30. That's the way they grade it. The reason for that is so that there are no negative scores. On the first one, I skipped 6 questions and answered every other question. I got every question I answer correct. So, 24 times 5 is 120. I skipped 6, so 120 plus 6 equals 126. A 126 out of 150 is great for a Mini Mu competition. On the second one, I got a 4 wrong and 17 correct. I skipped the rest. I got a 94. I heard the lowest score for this session was a 97, so I was close to placing.

I have never won anything in any of the math competitions I've gone to. So imagine my surprise when they said "Come up if your name is on here," and my name was on the slide for the first session! They only give out ten awards for each category (4th and 5th grade, Pre-Algebra, Algebra, and Geometry). I got ninth place. At first I thought I was going to be in tenth place, but it turns out there was somebody who scored a 125.

It was really fun, and everybody was proud of me for placing. Math is not my strong subject.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving. I went to Ocala Palms again this year to visit my great aunt. I didn't really do anything besides playing Harvest Moon DS Cute and going on the laptop for tips and tricks on Harvest Moon DS Cute. Sure, call me obssessed. I'll tell you, HM DS Cute is SOOOO addicting...

Anyway, on Wednesday, I assisted my mom in preparing the feast. There was delicious turkey (it was put in the stove upside-down before the mistake was realized), amazing cranberry sauce made from scratch (the raspberry vinegar smelled awful and I didn't like the scented tree bark. Most people call that dried cinnamon), favorsome mashed potatoes (...nothing to complain about there. It was actually pretty good) and rich pecan pie made from scratch (a little too rich though).

When we got there, I kicked back and played Cute (after the usual greetings and how-are-you-doing's, of course) until my mom yelled at me to set the table. The table was out on the back patio inside the mosquito net. It was boiling hot outside! I didn't feel like eating out in the heat, but I didn't want to get murdered for eating inside unlike everybody else. I had to go get the tablecloth, napkins, and fancy silverware. No cornucopia. It was a tiny basket filled with red, orange, and yellow leaves, pumpkins, squash, acorns, pine cones, all those fall and Thanksgiving stuff. I put two candles on either side and set the table, making sure to fold the napkins so that it looks like a green triangular crepe with a fork on top of it. Then I went inside and found my mom trying to make the gravy. She told me to pour the white powdery mix into the pot when it boils. I did as she asked, but the "gravy" didn't look edible. It was grayish lumps in a pot. After that failed attempt, I went out to the can storage counter and found a can of gravy. So the turkey was saved from dryness. Thanks to me!!!!
.......Ok, so my mom told me to find a can of gravy in the first place.
I still found it.

The actual dinner started after the many failed attempts to light the candles. The only matches that were in the house were the old fashioned ones inside the paper packet. To ignite it, one have to tear off a tiny splinter of a match and strike that against the strip of rough paper attached to the outside of the packet. Five broken matches later (those things are so fragile!!!), my great aunt got one to light up. But we couldn't do it a second time, so we just caught fire to one of the broken matches and used that to light the other candle.

Candles and matches aside, the feast went great foodwise. I was so stuffed I had to go lie down on the bed afterwards. While I was resting, I, of course, played Cute.

Time flew by, and before I knew it, night arrived. I had trouble falling asleep because there was a sensor in the guest bedroom that keeps making these clacking noises.

I overslept the next morning. Woke up at nine. That's very late for me, considering I usually wake up two hours earlier than that. I spent my morning playing Cute and researching for mining tips, and for most of the afternoon, I watched TV. When it was time to go back to Tallahassee, I played Cute on the car ride home.

...Obssessed with HM DS Cute...

Veterans Day and Swim-o-Rama

Today is Veterans Day! In school, we made something called the "Brick Wall of Bravery" that is displayed in our auditorium. It consists of paper bricks with pictures and words on them, saying how important it is to honor our veterans and respect them. We had an All-American Heroes Rally yesterday. After the rally and the guest veterans speaking and the playing of the band and orchestra, we went outside to partake in the rally events. They kicked it off by having a photo scavenger hunt. After running around looking for the clues while taking a picture at each destination, we finally got a final clue that lead us back to the auditorium, where we first started. I was talking to somebody I know, and he told me that his class got a clue that made them go all the way to the cafeteria, and the next clue said, "Oops, it turns out we made a mistake. Go back to the soccer field," or something like that. I guess I should be grateful that our clues' destinations weren't that far from each other. There were other events too, such as Boot Camp, Bean Toss, United We Stand (hula hoop game), Patriotic Puzzle (basically, a jigsaw puzzle), and many more, but most of the unnamed activities were inside events nested in Boot Camp. As you can see, they were mostly physical stuff. Except for the Apple Pie Eating Contest. That was funny. Boot Camp had stuff like push ups, sit ups, jump rope, cone zig-zag, and Army Crawl. I did the jump rope. It didn't make sense; what were you supposed to be doing? So we moved on to the other events. I also did the jigsaw puzzle. We tied with the other team. The Bean Bag Toss kinda went unnoticed for me, cuz that was when I spotted my friend and I sat down and talked to him. He was the one who told me the story about his class having to go back and forth during the scavenger hunt (remember earlier?) After lunch of a hotdog, barbeque chips, 2 McDonald's Apple Pies, and a wild cherry coke, my class did the Minuteman relay. I didn't get to see it (where was I when that happened?) Anyway, we won that. But we had to redo the Boot Camp because "our timing was inaccurate." So, our class redid the camp (I was missing again. I forgot where I was at that time. I later found out one of my classmates filled in my position at jump roping. We got the best time for the Boot Camp).

As for the Apple Pie Eating Contest, that was hilarious. It was just apple pie filling and tons of whipped cream, but it was still a sight to see. They seperated the girls from the boys. The girls went first, then the boys. The whipped cream got all over everybody's faces. Oh, did I mention that you're not allowed to use your hands? You have to have them behind your backs. We lost, both on the girl round and the boy round. I was talking to one of my friends after the rally, and she said that the reason they got the whipped cream all over their faces is so that they don't have to eat it. That will make them finish faster. I thought that was funny.

To add to the pain my legs were in yesterday after all the physical activities, we had our Swim-o-Rama today. The Swim-o-Rama is an annual fundraiser our swim team holds to raise enough money to heat the pool through winter. We collect pledges from people and then we swim for it for an hour. Say you got a relative to pledge you 10 cents per lap. You swim for an hour nonstop. Say you swam 60 laps. Then you'd get six dollars. That simple. I managed to get $2.16 worth of pledges. I swam nonstop for an hour and I got 118 laps (a lap is 25 meters), therefore getting me approximately $300. This is a different kind of fundraiser. You don't just go out and ask for money. This is saying you're going to work for it. I did, and I got three hundred dollars, which is one hundred more than the expected goal for each swimmer.

...There is school is tomorrow.

I can't move my legs...

Halloween

Halloween kinda came last minute for me, so I didn't wear a costume. But before I went trick or treating, I stuffed myself with half a dozen cookies and some pasta salad. I didn't eat a lot of candy after that.
I basically went out and got free candy (isn't that what usually happens?). Then, I donated three fourths of my candy pile to my teachers.

EPCOT

Our seventh grade field trip to EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow)was on Thursday the 21st. Here's how my day went (the times are estimates):

4:15 AM- Alarm clock went off. Snooze button got hit two times.
4:30 AM- I'm actually awake now. Went downstairs and got breakfast.
4:45 AM- Sleeping.
5:00 AM- Getting ready to leave, although still half asleep.
5:10 AM- Running really late. You have to get to the bus ramp by 5:15.
5:13 AM- Driving to school.
5:17 AM- On bus and the teachers are taking role call.
5:30 to 7:30 AM- Sleeping.
8:00 to 10:00 AM- They showed a movie (Alice in Wonderland) on the TV. I played Blackjack with five other people sitting near me though (somebody was thoughtful enough to bring a deck of cards on the bus). We played so many rounds that after a while, somebody actually started to tell time from it (example: "What time is it?" "It's five Blackjacks after 8."
10:15 AM- We depart from bus. Park tickets and dinner passes were distributed.
10:30 AM- The teachers let us loose. Now that you're in seventh grade, you no longer need a chaprone with you. You only need a buddy along with you.

My buddy and I started by visiting the gift and souvenir shop, Mouse Gears. We bought a bag of cotton candy.

11:30 AM- Ran into a group of friends at the ice cream shop. Agreed to rendezvous at Norway at noon, in front of the boat ride, Maelstrom.

11:45 AM- Finished up ice cream and started to head towards Norway.
11:50 AM- Decided to visit Mexico on the way to Norway.
11:55 AM- Touring Mexico Square and looking at wooden animal carvings.
12:00 PM- Speed walking towards Norway because we're late.
12:10 PM- Arrived at Norway. Didn't see anybody we know there.
12:15 PM- My buddy phoned one of the friends. She said they'd be there soon.
12:20 PM- The group shows up. They were late because they were riding Test Track.
12:30 PM- On the boat ride, Maelstrom. At first, it went pretty well. We were riding along water, looking out at scenes of Vikings. Then, the boat wandered into Troll Country. The trolls were unsightly, so I closed my eyes (before you laugh, try looking at a troll without making a face). They were chanting,"This is Troll Country! Go back! Go back! Go back!" The boat went backwards (the trolls were supposedly pushing us back). We passed by polar bears (I didn't get this. The trolls pushed us back through a different path. But why were there polar bears?) Anyway, then while we were going backwards, we were going up on an incline (not a steep one though). We looked behind us, and saw light coming in through an archway (almost like a door), which all of us knew leads to the outside (we saw a waterfall on the front side of the ride entrance and thought it was for show). But then, a thought occured to all of us. We're going to drop down backwards. We were all screaming and holding on the the bar in front of us. A few seconds later, the boat turned to the right by about a foot or so, and we slid down a little slide. Then we went up another incline, but this time, we ended up at the entrance/exit. "That's it?" we had all asked in unison. I later realized the people behind us weren't screaming like we were when we came to what looked like the backwards drop. They probably have been on the ride before, and now think that we are complete lunatics.
12:25 PM- The ride duration was about two minutes, but we were all a little spazzed out because of the illusion of the fake drop. The people who were afraid of drops probably had jelly arms from holding on to the bar too tightly. After that little
escapade, we decided to visit the countries. We went with China, since it was the closest to Norway (besides Mexico, which my buddy and I already visited). We merely passed through and did some sightseeing. The group bought umbrellas that look like panda bears. After China, we visited Germany and its sweet shoppes (that's how it was spelled). We looked in Karamel-Kuche, looking at all the caramel apples and being sure to look at the pickle tree(in Germany, kids decorate Christmas trees, and the adult hides a pickle ornament somewhere on the tree. The first kid who finds the pickle, gets a little extra gift from jolly old St. Nicholas. They were even selling some pickle ornaments, but they cost something around eight dollars each. No. Way.) Our group visited Japan and we spent a lot of our time there. I kept on getting annoyed by the robot that pops out of a display rack (it's part of the Kim Possible thing). Japan has the COOLEST and most RANDOM stuff!! There was a demonstrator outside who's showing everyone how to make Japanese candy. They look SO real!! She made a giraffe, a flamingo, a dragon, a monkey, and who knows what else! She was kneading the colors in, molding it, and painting the finishing touches on it. It was so cool. I took pictures.

Around 1PM- Our group separated in Japan, and my buddy and I went back to Italy, which we had skipped while we were going to Japan. Simply some sightseeing.

We passed the Great American Adventure without really looking into what it is. It wasn't really a country, so I guess we didn't really pay attention to it.

Then, after that, we passed Japan again and went to Morocco. There were street vendors selling stuff like jewelry and belly dancer outfits. The floors, walls, and the streets were made out of stuff that replicates the buildings in the real Morocco. Dried mud, it looked like. But I'm sure they built it out of something else that looks like mud or clay. I don't like the penny pressing maching in Morocco. It ate my two quarters, AND my penny!

The city I've been wanting to go to, FRANCE! I bought souvenirs there including a gold Eiffel Tower chain, and a French fridge magnet. We also saw the show happenning out on the street. There were two guys, and one's dressed as a chef, and he had a whistle. The other guy was standing on top of five chairs stacked together (which was AMAZING!). Then, the guy on the chairs did a handstand on the back of a chair and a giant four foot tall plastic champagne bottle! I took pictures of that, and I'll share them with you once I figure out where I put my camera.

We crossed the International Gateway (with some difficulties. It involved getting confused and losing all sense of direction) and explored United Kingdom and Canada. The Beatles actually perform in UK; we passed by the stage. The gift shops were even selling Beatles posters.

We had gone in a circle, and we decided to finally do the Kim Possible thing. We went to the recruit center at the entrance, and we got sent to the nearest country, Mexico. We just went and discovered some clues about what evil plan Drakken and Shego is up to. We simply try to find the items Wade showed us on the screen of the phone we got (it's called a Kimmunicator. Get it? Kimmunicator. Communicator. Ha ha). Once you find that item, press a button (I didn't get to touch the Kimmunicator. My buddy was the one doing it. My fingers were sticky cuz the cotton candy. Hers too, but she has an available hand. I was holding the cotton candy bag and the map of EPCOT (never put it away. I hate getting lost)on the Kimmunicator while standing close to it and something will happen. We finished our mission pretty quickly. The last item was to find a box. We found it at the side of the Mexican building and dropped the Kimmunicator into the box. We were done.

In the latter half of the day, my buddy and I bought another bag of cotton candy. That and the ice cream sundae was pretty much what we ate that entire day, if you don't count water and breakfast. Then, at around 5:00 PM, we went back to the meeting place, the Electric Umbrella. The teachers took role call, then we boarded the bus at 6:00 PM. This time, no Blackjack. I was just sitting there and watching TV. Shows on Nickalodeon like iCarly and Victorious was on. So I sat there and listened to girls singing the theme songs while the boys mumble. One of our chaprone teachers exclaimed after the girls were done singing,"So you can remember THAT, but you can't seem to remember that a negative plus a negative equals a negative?!" That was pretty funny.

A little while later though, about ten minutes from the school, a bus broke down. Not kidding. Our Astro bus stopped right in front of Wendy's. We were pretty confused on what was happening. Some people asked,"Are we getting Wendy's?" About five minutes later, we were informed that a bus had broke down. After a little while of sitting there looking out at the Wendy's place, several students had climbed aboard on our bus. I guess the kids in the broken bus divided into four groups (there were five buses in total) and each group got into the remaining four buses. I didn't have anybody sit next to me before, but after that incident, I did.

Anyway, we continued on. I don't know what they're doing with the broken bus back at Wendy's, but the rest of us are heading back to school.

Ten minutes later, we arrived back at Deerlake's bus ramp. I checked out with the chaprone to make sure that I came back from EPCOT, and then I went home with my parents, who were waiting for me at the ramp. I told them all about the trip there, my day at EPCOT, and the trip back; I explained to them why I was late in arriving.

After telling my story, I decided to blog about it. It was a pretty fun trip. I can't wait until I'm in eighth grade. I hear you get to go on a cruise!

After telling my story, I decided to blog about it. Hope you enjoyed reading all the trouble I've gone through. The reason it took me this long to post this was because my computer kept messing up and I lost what I've typed TWICE. I finally typed it all up again. Halloween post coming up shortly.

Science Fair Project Part 2

Oh man. Even though I have a science fair partner, my mom made me write out the entire project blueprints by myself. At least there will be something to discuss once I meet up with my partner. I'm thinking about using lima beans and planting them in cups and filtering the sunlight to be a specific color, to see if it will affect the plant growth. More research needed, or at least to confirm some points in the experiment. I changed the variable of light bulbs to sunlight because of the electricity bill we'll rack up. I'll just simply keep count of the number of hours of sunlight the plants get, and record the temperatures before and after school, if it's not the weekend. More will be posted once I talk to my partner.

Science Fair Project

I really don't like science fair projects. To me, it's kind of hard to come up with an idea of what to do. And even if I came up with a great idea, I still have to consider if it is eligible. Like can it be applied to the scientific method (By the way, I'm having mixed feelings about you, Aristotle. Sure the scientific method benefited humanity, but now, I'm not really liking it)? If it can, then I have to list all the aspects, such as variables, the independent variable, the dependent variable, the constant, the control, the hypothesis, the conclusion, and of course, data and graphs. And now that I'm in seventh grade, I have to choose a grade appropriate topic. That means I can't use the same topic from fourth grade (too bad, the teachers were really impressed with it). I guess I should feel lucky I have a partner this year. We went with the topic of "Will different colored light affect plant growth?" This is one of those plant projects that will take some time to experiment. Maybe I'll get a Wisconsin Fast Plant like the people on the internet suggested. Takes about one week to grow. Not that bad, considering the deadline. The interesting thing about it is, since in the spectrum, green wavelengths are reflected by plants(which is what gives them that green color, also because of chlorophyll), so I'm compelled on my own accord to continue due to curiosity of the affect of the plant from the radiation of the green light during the experimentation. Or perhaps it might not even affect the plant at all. I will continute to post new updates about the scrutiny.

School

Oh wow. We're in our second week of school and we already got assigned seats in Civics class. Is it considered LOUD if you're making studying the states and their capitals more interesting by having a competition of seeing who can answer first? Apparently, the teacher thought so. Said we were "shouting" the answers. And don't blame me. I wasn't one of the people who were shouting. So thanks to some CERTAIN people, I'm stuck at the desk array on the far side of the classroom, sitting in the same group as the class troublemaker, and two other people. To make matters worse, I can't see the board. I'll have to get up (quietly) and go kneel down in the front of the classroom and copy down the homework, get a leg cramp from kneeling down for so long, then go back to my seat and ask the people at my desk what our teacher told us to do because I was occupied copying the week's events.

Other events

This picture was taken on a rainy day. The rain flooded our backyard! I don't know why, but I was standing at the window looking out at our yard and my dad took a picture of it.


This was taken on my dad's birthday. It was pretty close to the Fourth of July, so we celebrated those two events (at my mom's friend's house. She's in the picture)with patriotic cupcakes! If you look closely, you'll see that there are strawberries arranged to look like a star, AND a blueberry in the middle. Along with a candle, of course.


Somebody decided to open a bike repair shop in the middle of the living room. With a few rugs, a makeshift light fixture hanging from the stairs, and our old bikes, my dad made good use out of the living room area. He actually DID fix the bikes. I go biking pretty often now because my bike is functioning properly.

New summer knitting project

These are a bunch of cards I made with my knitting. The ones with toothpicks, I actually tried to knit, but failed. So instead, I used my regular needles, then when I was done, I slid them onto the toothpicks.
































This is a picture of a fruit protector (put a rotund fruit in it and it will keep it from getting damaged. I used an apple), a cell phone cosy that looks like a Poptart, and an iPod/phone cosy.
















A picture of me knitting. I didn't know my picture was being taken.

Fourth of July!

Happy Fourth of July! My mom and I made patriotic cupcakes and cheesecake. After feasting, everybody (almost) went out when it got dark. We (mostly me) lit the fireworks. We had a wooden square and we stood the fireworks on the makeshift platform after we lit them. We watched the light showers emitting from the fireworks. It was really beautiful! Unfortunately, we used up all of the fireworks before too long. That was disappointing, but I had fun lighting and watching them!

Violin Practice

Angels We Have Heard On High


Here's the other carol.

Silent Night


My mom dug out my old pieces from my Winter Concert. Got two Christmas carols.

Pictures at an Exhibition


This is a different arrangement, so it will sound differently than the Pictures you're probably used to.

The Swan

This is a song called "The Swan" from the Carnival of the Animals. Really pretty song. I messed up a lot. Violin's still not tuned.

Blueberry Jam


This is a repetitive and redundant song called "Blueberry Jam." I know some of the people in my orchestra disliked it (one who even hated it). And if you had to play this song for two hours over and over again, I think you'd know how I felt. I kept messing up because of nervousness, and also because you know when you do the exact same thing over and over again, you tend to mess up in a little while? That's what that repetitive song did to me. I finally got to the end on the 33rd shot!

Summer Projects

I knitted a cupcake! It only took me about an hour and a half! This cupcake looks better than my first one. I don't have a picture of that. Sorry.


I knitted a bag for my cousin as a birthday present. Happy Birthday P Noon! It took me a few weeks to knit this. If you look carefully, you can see a diamond pattern.

Violin Practice

My mom recorded me playing Theme From Canon In D by Johann Pachelbel, arranged by John Capronegro. My violin was SERIOUSLY out of tune, so my notes were too. I think more songs are coming up. Probably The Swan from the Carnival of the Animals. Might be a while. This video took me about five takes because I kept messing up due to nervousness (and if you are that person from my 6th grade class and your name starts with an N and ends with a Y and your last name starts with a P and ends in an L, you're probably laughing as you read this).

Knitting

I've been knitting a lot this summer, and this is a bag that I knitted. I'm knitting more stuff, and I'll be posting pictures of them on my blog soon!

Taekwondo Testing

In this picture, I'm testing for my yellow belt in a church. I'm the one on the farthest right with the patch on my dobak.

Summer!

It's finally summer!! ...Well, summer came a few days ago already, but I was having too much fun at the pool on Sunday to blog. Anyway, I'm planning on going to the pool a LOT these months! I also signed up for a bunch of summer camps. That should keep me busy for the summer. Nothing much to say except "HAGS!" (For those of you who don't know, HAGS is a common-among-school-students abbreviation for "Have A Great Summer!") I'm looking forward to having as much fun as possible at the pool with my friends before most of them leave to go to another continent or the other side of the world.

Thai New Year!

Today I went to a Wat (Thai temple) at Fort Walton Beach, around three hours away. I had to wake up at 5:30 am. :P

It was kinda fun, considering that Songkran (the water festival) didn't even happen (we left early). I was looking forward to getting wet (I packed extra clothes!)! :( So, I was basically wandering around the festival ground, looking for food. I did fortune telling sticks called Siam Si, and its fortunes have always been pretty accurate for me. This time it said I'll fall in love or something.

List of what I did:

Lit candles and incense sticks
Burned myself with an incense stick
Made donations
Stuck gold squares on a Buddha statue
And played a game where you have a fish net and you fish out a plastic egg. There was a number inside the egg and you win a prize. I won a bar of soap.

Oh, and Thai New Year is actually on April 13th, but that's on a Tuesday/Wednesday this year, so we went today instead.

Vancouver 2010

You've probably heard of the Winter Olympics holding in Vancouver, Canada. I've watched some of the competitions, and those athletes were amazing! They must train really hard. It's really fun to watch them. Too bad I couldn't stay up long enough a few nights ago to see what will happen in the skating laps. It was a school night. Were you one of the people to watch the Olympic? I caught a snippet of the opening ceremony, and it was AWESOME! There were colors everywhere, sporting off their countries!

Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. You'll know because Google designed an MLK graphic to go with the holiday. Do you celebrate MLK Day?
I get to stay home because there is no school today! Same thing with my parents: No work! How are you spending your day off? My mom's going to quiz me on FCAT stuff and I need to review some things. But, when I'm done, I will play almost all day!

Winter Break

I'm on my Winter Break right now. It's been a while since I played my violin. I probably should brush up on some basics before I go back to school on the 7th.
Don't you think New Year is a special occasion? My friend Arya says that New Year is very inconsistent. She's right, if you live in Europe, you would be celebrating 7 hours earlier, and in Asia, 12 hours (since it's on the opposite side of the globe). The time changes make New Year happen at different times. There's also the religion. In Thailand, you celebrate Thai New Year in April.
If you watched the New Year Special on TV in New York, you'd see some people get very excited on New Year. Why else would someone shout "Happy New Year!" to the sky AND blow their party horn at it too?