Blog #7

Looking back at this year, I can tell that this year was far better then my English classes in previous years. One thing that made this year so much better was the movie project. Over the last few weeks, we were able to watch our favorite movies for marks. This was just one reason why the project was so great. It was really fun to watch movies and explain what made them so great. Watching the dark knight was a great way to finish the year, especially after doing essays. while we tried to find a room to work in, we spent our classes in the hallway. we would watch a scene for a couple of minutes at the start of class, then we would discuss who or what would be the best choice for each category. There is no other class where we get to argue about who is the better actor in a movie. this was one thing that made English class fun. the other project that make this class great was the Poetry anthology. while some of the poems weren't as good as others, they were still fun to do. the best part of the project was building the bar table to present my poems. I have wanted to build something with my growing pile of hockey sticks and bike parts, but I didn't know what to build. I did not have enough parts to build a bench or a chair. So i built a bar table. after I get the stand back, I plan to attach the table I bought. One thing about this year that bugged me was the essays. while it was nice to have months to write an essay, it lowered my level of focus on them because i felt i had so much time. one thing that would make the essays way better would be if there were check-ups every week to make sure we worked on the essays before the last weeks before the deadline. other than this, everything seemed good for English.            

Spring Break

The best part of spring break for me was my trip to China. We left on March 21, and came back on April 3. The trip started with everyone meeting at the airport at 7:00 AM. After we managed to get away from our families, we moved through security to board our first flight to Vancouver. The flight going there wasn't very long, around an hour. Our next flight however was not as short. The flight to china was about twelve hours, with a fourteen hour time different. We boarded the plane in Vancouver at 1:00, and we arrived in China at 4:00 in the afternoon the next day. We met our tour guide, checked into the hotel, and then walked to a few sites before we crashed into bed. The next four days were spent working at the orphanage. We would work from 8:00 until 3:30. Later in the evening we would go on an walk around the city. We went to a Chinese snack street, to a local mall, and to the forbidden city. After working at the orphanage, we took a train to Xi'an, the cultural center of China. There we got to see the Terracotta warriors. The day was spend walking through the museum, learning about the history and culture in the city. After the tour was done, we returned to the hotel, and got ready to go see the local market. At the market, we saw a lot of the same things we saw in Beijing, but we also saw lots of new things. some of the similar foods we saw was scorpion, spider, centipede, and lots of other weird food. after a few days, we got packed and rode the bus to the airport. our flight was scheduled to leave around 5:00, but we were delayed until 10:00. once we finally took off, we flew to Guilin. We arrived in Guilin around 2:00 in the morning. our tour guide thought we would be hungry, so she bought KFC for all of us. The next day we got up, and toured many of the historical sites throughout the city. That evening, we had a cooking class scheduled, where our dinner was what we cooked. We cooked stir fry, lotus root, steamed pork, and bok choy. That evening in the market, I had the chance to try a Chinese McFlurry. they was almost no difference between the Canadian and the Chinese McFlurry. After this, we took a flight to Shanghai. It was clear to us that this was the economic center of China. this city was a far more urban city than Xi'an and Guilin. Here we had the chance to walk through a museum. We saw ancient clothing, jade, coins, and tools. The next day was our last in China. this day was spend packing all our things, and getting ready for the long flight. We left China at 3:00, and arrived in Calgary at 5:00. Of all the spring breaks I've had, this was by far the best break.                   

Old Video games

#898: Playing old school video games

 

While playing on the newest console is fun, it doesn’t compare to playing the retro games. When the GameCube came out, I was only about ten when I got it. Then, it was the newest console. Today, it is one of the classical consoles. I had Super Smash Bros., Mario Cart, NHL 2002, Pac Man 3D, etc. a few years ago, I brought the game console our cabin in Eureka Montana. Whenever it is raining down there, me, my brother, and my sister are on it playing our old time favorite games. In the family, I was the best at Mario cart, and NHL 2002, while my brother Adam was the best at Super Smash Bros. My sister was good at the Racing games, but wasn’t quite as good as me and Adam. It was always fun to play my old games, because of how often I don’t get to. Another old console that is fun to play on is my original Xbox. It was old, but it had some of the best games on it. At first, the only game I had was Battlefront II. It was a Star wars game where you could fly in space, be clone troopers, and sometimes be a Jedi. We got the console from my Dads friend from work. His kids were done with it, so he offered it to us. The game was preloaded onto the console, so we always could play it. It is still at our home under the living room TV. The game was originally released in 2005, we got the console and game shortly after 2006. In the same year, we got a new game for the Xbox; it was Need for Speed 3. It was from 1998. It was the oldest game we had, but it was still a very fun game to play. At first, we had a hard time winning the races and catching the racers, but after about a week, we got really good, and worked through the levels. We would sometimes prefer to play on these old school games than the new Call of Duty, Halo, or Just Cause. These games were so different from the new games because they had their own type of story line, the new ones were following along the same line. This is why the old games were awesome.              

 

Being up so Late Things are Funny

Being up so Late Things are Funny

It is very rarely that I am up late enough to find everything funny, but there was one night last year when it was me, my sister, and a friend of mine were up on our deck around the fake fire. Earlier in that afternoon, my friend and her brother came over to collect scarf’s that my mom had handmade, with team names, and numbers on them. The other mom and brother left, but my friend asked if she could stay for the night and everyone agreed that she should stay. We spent the first while of the night on YouTube looking up funny videos. Then we came across a video on how to light a strike-anywhere match on your teeth. We watched how she did it and how to do it right, then we grabbed some of my dad’s matches and tried on the deck. We tried and tried again, using dozens of matches, but we couldn’t get it. At this point it was close to 1am in the morning. Then we tried to do it on all kinds of surfaces. We laughed as we tried to light some on the windows, on the wood, and we tried on the fire pit. We were having such a good time, then I saw one of those plastic kinder surprise toys near the garbage. I went in to get it, and then lit one of the matches by the fire. The when I held the toy to the fire of the match, it instantly caught, and the whole thing went on fire, we were laughing, but we should have been more aware of the plastic dripping on the deck. We couldn’t stop laughing, the toy seemed to be almost flammable, when it shouldn’t have been. It was close to 2:30 in the morning before we went in and went to bed. That was one of those night when were we laughing for no reason.