Today we had a map test over East Asia. It wasn't that hard, and I don't think i missed anything which is good! Earlier this week we had a packet to work on and physical and political maps due. Oh, and we have our LAST test of the year next week!!!! It's exciting that it'll be our last test for the WHOLE year, except finals, but I still wish we were done with tests....
So, this summer, I'm gonna be swimming at 6:30 every morning the whole summer at Bartholomew (i don't know how to spell that sorry) with my club team, Lost Creek. I'll probably end up carpooling every morning with someone else. After that practice, I'll have summer league practice, but that should be a LOT easier than the first one. A week after school gets out, I'm gonna start drivers ed, even though my birthdays not till July 7th. Also, Anderson swimming tryouts are on July 7th and they last a week. Later in July I'll be going to South Padre for a week with church, and I go to Camp Longhorn for two weeks in early August. Somewhere in there my mom and step dad want to go to the beach for a few days, so that should be fun!

This weekend I have a long-course swim meet. A long course meet is where instead of the pool being the standard 25 meters, it's 50 meters. I swim mostly sprints, so this weekend I'll be swimming the 100 free, 100 fly, 50 free, and 50 fly. This will be my first long-course meet so I'm pretty excited!

This week our Asian meal projects were due. I thought the project was pretty easy, except it took a long time to get all the data from this one website that was very slow. We also did 3 chapters of guided readings, which i split up with some people in my class to make it easier. The guestion for this week is what is the number one place you want to visit out of all the places we've studied, and why? Well, we haven't gotten there yet, but I really want to go to Austrailia. The Great Barrier reef would be an amazing place to dive. Or, really, anywhere in Austrailia or New Zealand would be a good place to dive...

i just heard this song today and i think its really fun and WOW that guy can hit a high note!! the video is....odd...but i like the song, so check it out if you want
oh the song is grace kelly by mika
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiWsWzUgcXE

So the required post for this week was what do you want to be when you grow up? I haven't thought about this a LOT seeing as it changes like, all the time, but right now i think it would be fun to be like, a realtor or interior decorator, or a youth minister. And i know a youth minister sounds crazy, but when i look at my leaders at church who are youth ministers, their work weeks consist of bible studies at starbucks every morning, going on mission trips all around the world, year round, skiing in colorado, tubing in the summer and going to south padre for 2 weeks, going backpacking in the rockies, and doing all sorts of awsome stuff all the time. and i dont know about you, but that sounds like my kind of job!

This week we also went to a religion panel where experts from all the 5 major religions came and spoke about their religion. The Buddist monk and the Catholic preist were a little hard to understand, but they said some really interesting things. It was really cool to see what the monks wore, and how the Hindu expert dressed. And the Jewish rabbi answered my question, that was pretty cool.

This week in geography, we watched a video on people climbing Mt. Everest. It was really sad when some of the people died but thankfully most of the people made it to the top. I like rock climbing but I don't think I would want to climb Mt. Everest.
This weekend on Sunday is Mother's Day, and my mom and a lot of her friends always go out to one of her friends lakehouses and stay there for the weekend, and on Sunday, the rest of the mom's families come out to the lake for the day. It's really fun, so that's what i'll be doing Sunday. And Saturday im going to go hang out with a bunch of my friends and probably go swimming since its sooo hot here all of a sudden.

Today in geography we climbed Mount Everest. First we had to "take all our gear to base camp." So everyone in our "teams" (rows) took turns carrying each other's backpacks up and down the aisles. After everyone finished, we had to hike through the deadly ice path (i forgot the name of it). We had to climb over a chair and only step on the white pieces of paper to get across safely. When the teacher said freeze, we had to stop where we were and see if the bottom of the paper we were standing on had an x on it. If it did, we were dead. I died here. hahaha oh well. The next thing the rest of our team had to do was hike through the strech of the mountain where temperatures can get up to 100 degrees or more. So, while holding onto the "climbing rope" (an orange piece of string) the teams would have to walk back down the aisle on the pieces of paper. Halfway through they had to put on their "oxygen masks" (a half sheet of paper) and their sweaters, all without letting go of the string. If everyone made it this far, they would have to get to camp 3 and discover "trash" (all our backpacks from the first activity). Without taking off the oxygen masks, everyone had to help "clear the trash" (move it out of the way). All the teams headed back across the papers to see what was next. Each team now had to pick a number 1 through 10. The number your team leader picked either meant you had good weather and could go on to the summit, or you got bad weather and had to go back down the mountain. Two of the 5 groups got bad weather. Each person that go to go to the summit would climb on a chair to get on a desk and stick a sticky note with a decoration on it on the picture of the summit that was projected on the wall. (They all had to keep their oxygen masks on.) Everybody except one person made in the time they were given. I think it was 2 minutes...
It was a really fun activity, and it made everyone laugh a lot.

This weekend my family went to Buda, a small town outside of Austin, for the 11th annual Weiner Dog Races. It's a really funny tradition the town of Buda has, and it was first made in honor of the man who thought it would be a good idea. Even if you don't have a dog that's going to be racing, you could still bring your weirner dog for fun. This lady even dressed up her dog as a cowboy!

Here's a video of one of the races. The first time I went I was surprised how fast those little dogs can run! haha, it's a funny event, but my family always has fun

Today we saw the packages from Taiwan! The stuff in it was really cool, i really liked the clay parrot and the caligraphy book. It was fun to see all the things that make up your culture. Everyone in my class thought we should get cool folders like yall have.
Today we also got assigned an Asian food project. We have to make a main dish, and side dish, and a desert from a region of Asia. I love Asian food, and I love cooking so this is going to be really fun for me!

This week in geography, we did posters and presentations about different religious groups around the world. My group's religion was Hinduism. It was cool to learn about other religions. My mom is Christian, and my dad is Jewish, so I know a lot about those two religions. I learned that Hindu's make their own rules for how to worship, and that there are 3 main groups (I can't spell any of them :D)
This week, the state made a new law - all students must take the Fitness Gram, a test to see how physically fit we are. We have to run a mile, at least 12 push-ups, and crunches. The swim team had to take our test this week. I don't like running, but I ran the mile in 6:52, which I was happy about. I think the test is dumb, especially since they test all the sports and athletics. I mean, if we're in a sport, we should be fit!

This week we had two maps due, a physical map and a political map for Southwest Asia. They were pretty easy because it was a small area of land. We also started reading about the ethnic conflicts in Iraq. Our class was split into groups, and each group was either Sunni, Shi'ite, or Kurdish. My group was Kurdish, and we control a lot of the oil in Iraq. Unfortunatly, we're not quite sure what our plan for peace is yet...but that's ok, we'll figure it out Monday!
This weekend I'm going to go do Keep Austin Beautiful, volunteer at Town Lake, a populat place downtown. Some people at my church are going and we'll be canoeing in the lake and cleaning up trash along the banks and in the water. I'm also going to my friend's house with a few other people tomorrow and spending the night. Other than that, it was a pretty uneventful week...

This week, we have a test over Africa. We have to know all of Unit 6, (3 chapters), and memorize all the countries and a lot of the landforms in Africa as well. We also have a current event due on Africa, and a project where we have to design our own African mask. I really like learning about Africa, and I also liked the discussions we've had in class about Rwanda and Darfur.
This past weekend I went with my friend Rachel to a cool grocery store called Central Market to see a few bands perform some songs for the Persian New Years. The music was really cool, and a few brave people even danced! This weekend I'm probably going to go shopping and hang out with some friends. Talk to you soon!

This week, spring break, I went on a mission trip with my church to Tijuana, Mexico. 63 of us went to build houses for good, hard-working families who just can't seem to make enough money to have their own house. We were split up into 5 different groups, to build 5 houses in 5 different places all over the city. This is a picture of my group's site before we started any work on it.

At the end of the first day, this is what we had accomplished. It doesn't look like much, but we had taken about 5 inches of land off the original site to make it level. The two dirt piles are the beginning of our "volcanoes" which you fill with water and then break to make cement.

This is a picture of what one of the two dirt piles look like when you add water to them. When they start to completly soak through, you break down one of the walls and mix everything up to make cement. We had to make 11 of these to fill our entire slab with cement.

At the end of the second day, we had this cement slab that was smoothed and ready to dry overnight. (One of our group leaders, Mrs. Cook, got in the picture, but that's ok.)

At the end of the third day, we had all our walls up. This was so exciting to see, because the previous days had been long and hard, and the progress couldn't be seen as easily as it could now. This house is very small, with only two rooms, 3 windows, one door, and one doorway to get from one room to another.

The 4th day, we had to paint all of the blue siding and nail it up. We got our frame for the roof up, and we were really excited. My camera ran out of pictures, but on the last day, we cut holes for the windows and doors, and got the roof shingled and finished. We also got to hand the family the keys and it was great to see how happy and thankful they were.

This week in geography, we presented our Rwanda Genocide Socratic Seminar's. We read a bunch of articles last week, and watched a movie on the genocide in Rwanda, and then on Monday we had to have a discussion about everything we learned, and what we thought about what we had read or seen. This week, we're doing the same thing, but with Darfur. All the stuff we're learning is interesting, but it's also really sad.
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The weather this week has been really weird. On Monday, it was kinda chilly, but not too bad, and it only rained for about 10 minutes. On Tuesday, it was about the same. On Wednesday it was warm and sunny, and then today its freezing and raining!!!!!! Austin weather is crazy. It seems like it changes every 5 minutes.

This is my dog Rufus. He's a jack-russel mix.. He's about 3 years old and he was a resuce dog from a pound in Temple, Texas.

This is my labrodor-retriever mix, Rusty. He's also a rescue dog from the Austin Humane Society. He's about 10 years old, but he's still hyper.

This is my house. It's just down the street from Anderson.

Hey! Sorry it's been such a long time since I've posted anything new, I lost my password....
This week in geography we read about the genocide in Rwanda. I didn't know anything about before now. We watched a movie on it called Ghosts of Rwanda and it was really sad (one girl in my class cried) but I learned a lot.
Ok, well, I don't think I've said anything about me. I'm on the varsity swim team here at Anderson, and I'm also on an after school club team called Lost Creek. I have 2 dogs, a labrodor and a jack russel/rat terrier mix. I live just down the street from school and sometimes i bike in the mornings. Well, talk to you soon!

this week in geography, we finished presenting our posters on russia and transcaucasia. we were assigned parts of the chapter and had to come up with slogans or a catchy saying to help the class remember the material. i would rather do that over reading the chapter any day! =]

Hey! Sorry, this might be a little confusing, but I changed my blog URL, so here's the new one!