Music

My head is full of music. Swirling round and round inside my head every day. I have the pop song that I heard on the radio, on an endless loop round and round. I have the sheet music chord pattern that I was working on for rock band implanted into my brain. I have the inversions for a chord in my classical piece for piano lessons, a Schubert, repeating itself down and down and down the piano, like a ladder. I turn on the TV to Palladia, music videos repeating themselves in an endless cycle. Soon these too will be trapped in my brain, allowed to go free but choosing to stay, spinning and swirling round and round in my head.
My head is full of music.
And I'm okay with that.

Looking For Alaska

This week I read Looking For Alaska by John Green. 16 year old Pudge gets sent to boarding school in an effort to escape his rather boring, non-social life at a public school in Florida. There he meets a lot of interesting characters such as his new best friend The Colonel, an insane girl named Alaska, and his supposed Romanian girlfriend, Lara. I really can't tell you anything more then that without giving it away, because half of the amazingness of the book of the book is being surprised by the plot twists, but it is also the most amazing book ever! I totally felt what the characters felt, more then almost any book that I'd read before, and some parts were so sad and some parts are hilarious. You all should read it because it's AMAZING!!! I kind of liked this book more then The Fault in Our Stars, which by the way is by the same author if you didn't know, and I was surprised that I did. There are kind of a lot of mature topics, so if you don't feel comfortable reading about that stuff, you probably shouldn't read it. But this book is amazing, and otherwise all of you should.

Nuggets Game

The smell of Popcorn and Hot Dogs drift around the inclosed stadium as Selah and I settle down in our seats, looking down at the brightly light-up basketball court in the middle of the gigantic venue. My mom comes back too, quickly, from getting food from ourselves and we excitedly glance at our watches/phones to see when the game is going to start. Just as I reach for my iPod, the lights go black and the crowd screams as the big screen in front of me introduces our players loudly, drawing my eyes up away from the court and towards it. Our center, a tall white guy from some foreign country tips off into one of the hands of our players, who dribbles down, outside the three point, launches the ball in the air, and scores. Yes! Selah, my mom, and I give each other high fives as I notice out of the corner of my eye an elderly woman in an usher's vest walk down the aisle, high fiving people. She makes her way over to us. "3 points" she says. My mom and I look at each other. Is she going to do this every single time we score? We wonder. From then on, every 3 point shot, we see the soon-to-be familiar figure hobbling down the aisle. It gets annoying fast, but after a while, Selah and I start getting used to it, and even having fun with it. We leave the stadium convinced that we had a good time, even if we had to give high-fives to an annoying lady every single time we got a 3-point-shot.

On the Road to Find Out

This week I read On the Road to Find Out by Rachel Toor. This was a book about a 17 year old named Alice and starts when she was just rejected from the only college that she had ever wanted to go to, Yale. Her friend Jenni tells her to stop being miserable, and do something, so throughout time, she decides to go for a run. This sets her off on a long path about learning to love running, meeting her new boyfriend, and going through a various series of relationships with her family and friends. This book was really good-it managed not to be boring while describing everyday events. I also really connected with the characters. I thought that this book was really good, fun to read, and I would recommend it to all of the people in our class, especially the girls maybe.

Snowshoeing

I struggle through the snow, aimlessly calculating where to put my foot next. It doesn't work of course, as I plunge through the thin layer of ice and into the powdery snow, getting all of it in my boot. I slowly pull myself out, sighing, and stand next to some friends on an ice shelf that looks adequately sturdy. Suddenly, out of nowhere, I feel the impact of someone slamming into me. I fall, my face grinding into the freezing snow, and roll down the hill into a small valley in the ground where about six faces stand, gazing at me with looks from amused contempt to barely held in laughter. I look at them and lunge toward the nearest person, grabbing their feet and bringing them down, tackled into the snow...Well, I get them on their knees in the snow before they shake my tackle and stand up. Maybe not the result I wanted, but at least I didn't completely screw up. The rest of my friends tumble down the hill to join in the game. Over the next 30 minutes, I tackle many, get tackled more; I figured out the tackling part pretty quickly, but apparently I'm an easy target to tackle, because, well, I was pretty bad. For thirty minutes we play in the snow, falling into the cold powder and slamming each other into it, until we are so tired and can hardly stand up in the shifting snow to tackle others. When Elizabeth calls us back to the circle, she receives 23 freezing kids, windblown and with snow in our gloves, but also more happy then before.

Samaria Gorge

We got dropped off at about midnight. I stood in the sticky grass, watching the dew collect on my brand-new sneakers, which seemed too bright for the gray, gravely, dirt the dullness of the early morning. The bus dropped us off and sped down the dirt road, leaving a cloud of dust behind it. The width of Greece away from our goal, we were left alone with only a group of determined tourists. Without further ado, we set off on the steep trail.
If you were wondering what's going on, my family and I were determined to walk all the way across the country of Greece, on a trail called Samaria Gorge. This trip would be 11 miles long, but much more difficult then it seems because of the constant ups and downs and changes of weather. One especially cool thing is that we had the chance too, on the other side, swim in the Bolivian Sea on the closest point to Africa in Europe. So we set off down the steep slippery slope, sliding down rocks and pebbles, in the middle of the night.
6 hours later, my Mom, Dad, Brother and I came down the final hill approaching our destination. It was hard, but not as hard as expected, and at least we had made it! I looked down at my shoes on the black, silky-smooth sand as I stood on the beach, no longer seeming as bright as before, and out into the emerald, choppy, and hopefully warm water at the farthest thing that I could see in the distance: the point of Africa.

Mistborn

This week I read Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson. I got this book as a present for Christmas and was pleasantly surprised by it, even though it still wasn't my favorite book ever. This book is about an orphan named Vin who has spent the whole entire life on the streets, in a futuristic land where a species of humans named Skaa works as slaves to the rest of the considered superior species. After a few horrible years being abused by her older brother and in a Skaa thieving crew, she gets discovered and rescued by a man named Kelsier and one named Dockson, and their crew in an attempt to overthrow the empire and restore rights to the Skaa, after learning that she possesses some sort of weird magical powers. This book was good-especially the end. I wouldn't recommend it to people who don't really read this genre (mystery/action/fantasy) a lot I wouldn't recommend it. The author was very willing to make huge changes to the world of his characters, which I enjoyed, and resulted in a lot of crazy insane twists. This book was good but dull sometimes but TOTALLY worth hanging on for the end. My favorite character was probably Kelsier-I felt like he was awesome and actually a developed character, and I've said this a lot, but the end is totally a twist related to him. This book would be good for almost anybody in our class if you like this type of book, and don't mind varying qualities of writing style but an amazing general idea.

Swim Meet... SOL 6 (3/6/15)

My head buzzes, replacing my thoughts with a seemingly never-ending sound of white noise. I can't feel my arms and legs as I sit, tight with nerves, as my heat gets called.

This is what it feels like at a swim meet. I've been to a lot of them, and I still get nervous. Well, I have a good reason to get nervous for this one. It was my last meet with a chance to qualify for State. I had been working hard all week, but it seemed pretty tough to drop 4 seconds.
Swimmers, stand up on the blocks.
I get up on the blocks, feeling the roughness of the step scrape my skin. This is when I start glancing around at all my opponents. Next to me is a girl about my height, who looks good. The rest except for one are all taller then me, surprisingly. I'm always the tallest at school, but at swim team, I'm both the youngest in my age group, and the smallest. One away from the opposite side from me is a girl shorter then me, and then next to her one that I know that I can beat, so I start to feel better.
Swimmers, take your marks.
This is when my thoughts start to go blank and I try to prepare myself for the race. Four lengths, back and forth, back and forth. Start out with just go fast but don't put to much effort into it, and glide. Try to drop the pace a little bit on the second one. Then make a decision on the third lap depending on how I'm feeling. I always factor it in as a 3-lap-race- the fourth lap will seem like nothing because of the fact that I know that I'm almost there, and people next to me will push me competitively. I need a time under 1:28.00.
Beep!
The Buzzer sounds and all of us dive. I catch one glimpse of my family and friends watching and cheering on the other side of the pool before I hit the water.

Skiing

I feel like I'm in a snowglobe as I leisurely ski down the slope. The icicles hanging off the green tree branches, the early morning sun, the soft, gently falling snow...it just all seems too perfect! I speed up as I go over the next rising hill, my skis falling down the steep other side of the slope, wind starting to knife through my hair, my helmet, the seemingly thin layers of my jackets underneath my ski coat. I tuck and speed up even more, savoring the feel of going fast-maybe even faster then I've ever gone before. By now the wind is roaring at my ear, snow stinging my face and coating my goggles as I feel the rush of adrenaline and fear that I get from skiing this fast. I struggle to control my skis, going out of control. The next hill rises up and the drops down again, my skis seemingly leaving the ground and my stomach rising into my throat as the ground below speeds towards me. Suddenly, a person comes out of nowhere in front of me. I freak, trying not to hit them, and come to an abrupt stop, trying not to spin out, putting every single bit of my energy into stopping. I hear an angry yell as the person behind me realizes that they were almost hit by me. The wind stops howling and the harsh wind gets softer as I skid to a stop. Finally, I am all alone, lying on a soft hill of snow, and the snow that is gently falling gets illuminated by the perfect, sparkling, snowglobe-type sun.

Sorta Like a RockStar

Over break I read Sorta Like a Rockstar  by Matthew Quick. This book was about an eighth grade girl named Amber who lives alone with her mom and her dog, after being kicked out of her mom's boyfriend's last house (which Amber blames on herself) they have taken to living on a bus, homeless. Her mom turns into an alcoholic and secretly a drug addict, and Amber's only chance to be normal is when she goes over to her friend Ricky's house, who is wealthy and has a successful mother who Amber basically idolizes. Over the course of the book, Amber  saves her favorite teacher from being fired, teaches a group of Korean People english, visits old people in a retirement home, and accidentally stumbles across a strange, traumatized, Haiku Writing War veteran who actually becomes one of her best friends. Then a tragedy happens and her whole entire life is changed.
This book was actually REALLY GOOD. It had some mature topics, but really not that bad and the characters were great. I would call this book realistic fiction, and would also recommend it to almost everyone in the class.
Books that I want to read:
If I Stay
Looking For Alaska
Rethinking Normal
Book that I got as a present:
I got this book as a present and...
Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson