FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!!

The first day of school is a good day when you only have to get up at 6:30. Actually, I probably could have pulled off getting up at around 6:50, but I didn't want to risk it on the first day.
So yes. School has started, and it's about nine more months until we are out for summer and free once more.
We started out the day in advisory. I have Ms. Patrick, who is also new to this school. From what I have seen of her, she sounds like a pretty cool teacher. We then went off to an upper school assembly, where Mr. Bachner gave us the whole spiel about dress code and safety.
Then, it was English. I absolutely love my english teacher. Her name is Ms. Mcdermott (pronounce Ms. Mcdermitt) and seems like she is laid back but ready to teach at the same time. She asked us what our favorite book was, and I melted inside, because that is definitely one of my favorite things to talk about ever (others would include; volleyball and Psych).
After that I had my first free period ever, and that was kind of fun. Since we didn't get any homework in english (she promised us she would give us something tomorrow) I just sat around talking to people. Then it was break, which is an awkward time because you're stuck in between two rows of lockers and people trying to get into their lockers, so you can't really move. Though I eventually did find a way to get out of all the crowdedness.
Chemistry will be interesting this year. I have Dr. Horton, who is a little bit crazy. She's very extraverted and outgoing, and seems like the kind of person who is very O.C.D. The first thing she told us today was to never bring our textbooks to class and to keep them in our lockers or at home. She was the only one to give homework today, but it was a scavenger hunt on her blog, so it wasn't anything serious.
After that was lunch, where we went outside and ate on the balcony. It was burning hot. That's all I have to say about that.
Then I had a free, and I used that time very wisely! I finished my chemistry homework. YAY!
Spanish will also be interesting. Yesterday at orientation, the spanish teacher, who shall henceforth be called Señor, gave me a hard time about being in spanish 4, but today I found out that there are only THREE people in that class. Señor is also crazy. Or so I have been told....
Then, it was time for dismissal.
I am home now. I tried to crochet a butterfly, and I tried THREE times, but somehow it doesn't seem to come out right. I'll get it though.

Last Day of Vacation

Today, sadly, is my last day of summer vacation.
I know, it's so sad.
I've spent pretty much all day crocheting. I woke up early so I could crochet. So far, I've done some flowers, an apple, a whale, and a rose. Here is a slightly blurry picture of my apple. It took me like an hour and a half, and all the while I was worried that it would turn out ugly, but really, it didn't. 

Safe to say, I'm obsessed with cute crochet things. 

I can't really believe summer's over. I have orientation tomorrow, and then I'm going over to a friend's house because it's her birthday. Then, it's the start of a school year. I'm going to a new school this year, and I'm kind of excited. This year, I won't have to wake up at 5:45 because I have a bus that's coming to pick me up at 7:38 instead of 6:52! And, instead of getting out at 3:45, I get out at 3:07! YAY! Time to celebrate!! So, yes, I am excited for the changes. 

Book #30: El Principe de la Niebla

If you haven't noticed, the book that I just finished was not in English. It's in Spanish.
Turns out when you're going in to spanish 4, you have to read a spanish book for summer reading. Though, I have to say, out of the books I had to read for the summer, this one was my favorite.
El Princípe de la Niebla is written by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, and I think that it's a book intended for middle schoolers, or so.
It was about a thirteen year old boy named Max who moved into this house next to the sea. This house had an odd history. The son of the people who had lived there before Max had drowned while playing. Max experiences a lot of odd things, and his sister Irina ends up in a coma. He then, along with his friend Roland, and his sister Alicia, has to find out what really happened in this town.
The book started out similar to The Bogart by Susan Cooper. It ended with some fight between Max and a Rumpelstiltskin-like character. I call him Rumpelstiltskin because he will grant people's wishes in return for something else. I always like those types of characters. I'm a fan of Rumpelstilstkin on the show Once Upon a Time. 
Yes, there were some issues with the language. I am not fluent in Spanish (yet), so every now and then I had to look up words in my dictionary. There are some words though, that I just can't seem to remember. Volver is an excellent example. I marked it down in my book countless times what it meant, but I just kept on forgetting. I've read that word, used that word, but I don't remember what it means.
As I said before, I liked the book. I think that it was interesting and a bit creepy. I liked the setting, and the descriptions of the setting. I always like lighthouses.
While I was reading this book, I was often struck at how similar it was to the books that I normally read. I don't know why this should be a big deal, but I think I was expecting a little something different.
So, overall, it was good. 4 stars.

Tayler's House!

I went to my friend Tayler's house this afternoon. By the way, I stopped with the whole pseudonym thing because it was just too confusing for me. Also it took forever to think up a pseudonym, so I just quit. Anyway, Tayler was on my team for volleyball this past year. She's a very good middle hitter, and we became friends basically from the beginning of the season. We're like twins. Really. I'm not kidding. She reads, she likes The Hunger Games, and another one of my favorite series, Divergent. We agree on pretty much everything; food, clothing, and just little things we do, like she likes to cross her legs at the dinner table, and I do that all the time.  Her family is very very boisterous. It's not like my family at all. Her mom is like the coolest person ever because she's so outgoing, and has the best and funniest stories.
So today, I went over to her house to watch The Hunger Games, which if you didn't know, just came out on DVD. Apparently Tayler, her mom, and her sister Carly went to Giant Eagle (the grocery store of Pittsburgh) at midnight on Friday to get the movie. Tayler's mother said that the first person to find the DVD would get five dollars, so they were running around the store, pushing each other, and yelling, trying to find out where this movie was in the store. Anyway, we watched some of the special features first. They were really good as far as special features go, thought through, and they revealed a lot about the movie behind the scenes. After that we watched the movie. Ahhhhhh... it was just as amazing as in the movie theater, it was so so good.
Then we played scrabble, a game that I'm really bad at playing mostly because the only words that I can come up with are four letters long. And if you've ever played that game before, it's hard to win with four letter words. While we were playing scrabble we were sort of watching 27 Dresses. It's a chick flick (??), a genre that I usually don't associate myself with, but it wasn't that bad.
After that we had dinner. Dinner is so much different than at our house. There was so much talking! Talking talking talking! I loved it. Tayler's mother, as I have mentioned before is really cool, and told me all these funny stories about when Tayler's dad was trying to scare his kids and all, it was so hilarious!
Anyway, so that was my day. I only have two more days of summer left...so sad. But I think I'm ready to get back to school (maybe?).

Book# 27, 28, and 29!

Yes, I finished three books in one week. The reason I didn't write about them was that I had more interesting things going on in my life, like a vacation.
Book number 27 was Pride and Prejudice. I had to read this for summer reading. Considering that the Pittsburgh Public Schools have to read Old Man and the Sea (please, kill me now) and Out of this Furnace, I got off really really lucky.
Overall, I liked it (4 stars), though I did think that the second half was much better than the first. The first half was made more interesting with the comparisons of it to the Lizzy Bennet Diaries, which I have talked about, and if you haven't seen it, you should go watch it...now. The second half got much more interesting with all of the action/love triangles. I didn't think at all that Lydia would marry George Wickham. And then the ending with Darcy, and the best part of the most well known love story of all time came together as the two protagonists realized each other's affections one another, and it was wonderful. I haven't seen the BBC TV adaption, but I can say that I am very excited to see Colin Firth (I'm excited to see him any day) as Darcy. That, will be a marvelous experience.
Book number 28 was Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. I had wanted to read this book for a really long time. After I found out that the whole story was more or less the thickness of my mattress, I decided that I would listen to the audiobook. What I didn't know was that I had ordered the abridged version from the library. At least I think it was abridged. I don't think a person could read 1200+ pages in five and a half hours.
Anyway, the version that I did read was amazing. I loved it. I loved Jean Valjean most of all and how he changed throughout the novel from being a wretched man who just escaped from prison, to a loving and kind father to Cosette. I also liked the character of Thenardier (by the way, his name is not pronounced like it is spelled, just like everything else French), and how he lived basically only through tricking others into giving money to him. Overall, I think that the plot had continuous action, which was kind of surprising for a book that was published in the 1800s, and the characters were really well developed. The one complaint I have isn't really Hugo's fault, but every word in French ends in u, and it's very confusing to a person who is listening to the audiobook. It's all spoken fast, and it all sounds the same...ugh...no comprendo!
The last book, book number 29, another summer reading book, was All Quiet on the Western Front. It was ok. I just didn't think that I was able to imagine everything that was happening, because the author was too vague. A lot of the book took place in the protagonist's head, and I think that yes, it was just too vague. This is one book where I would have liked a little more description. There was so much of "oh, war makes a man old" and "woe to me" and it was just so repetitive. I also don't think the characters developed at all. 3 stars. And I think I'm being generous.

Sturbridge Village

So we did end up going to Sturbridge Village!
Sturbridge Village is like Williamsburg, except it's a different time period. It's smaller, and there aren't as many national historic places in the village, but it's a place where you get to see what life would have been like in the 1830's.
I guess I was expecting something a little different. Maybe a little bit more lively, I suppose, but overall, the village did seem dead.
We came into Sturbridge at about noon, and after some issues at the ticket booth over my dad's military experience and me working at the CMNH, we went into the village (we did get a discount, but only because my dad worked in the Air Force. Nothing to do with me working at a museum).
The place reminded me of Little House On the Prairie, which I watched a lot of when I was second and third grade. When we got in to the village, we immediately saw a group of little girls dressed in colonial era clothing, holding baskets and going to school.  I immediately became very jealous of them. I think it was some sort of experience-colonial-era camp, but it seemed awesome, and I'm sending my kid there when she/he is old enough to go. I think the clothing of the era is adorable, and I still have my Laura Ingalls Halloween costume from the second grade.
We went around the village, and talked to the tin shop man, the shoemaker, a blacksmith, a cotton mill person, and saw the people run the sawmill. I particularly enjoyed the blacksmith. We watched him make some legs for a trivet, and it was awesome. We also went to see a printer, but it wasn't as cool as the Edes & Gill printshop, mostly because the printer wasn't as sophisticated as the other one, and he didn't seem to love what he was doing.
As I said before, the place wasn't very crowded. There were probably only about fifty other visitors there. I guess the early morning thunderstorm scared them off a little.
That afternoon, we got into the car to start driving back home. My parents kept on talking about driving through the night, which is fine by me because I wouldn't have to stay up and drive, but eventually we stopped for a hotel.
The hotel was really nice. The bed was comfy, and I did some high jump practicing onto the bed. Later, I discovered that the soap in the bathroom was Nutrogena brand, and the shampoo, conditioner, and lotion were all from Bath and Body Works (AWESOME!).
We woke up yesterday morning to drive for six hours so we could get home. I think there were some traffic issues along the way, but I wouldn't know because I was watching My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Enchanted on my dad's iPad.
Now we're home. I hate unpacking, because we have to run everything through the laundry, put everything back where it was, and discover that we took all of the good food with us on the trip and ate it.
So now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go fold some laundry.

Boston!

Yesterday, we went and toured around Boston.

We started out the day with this hour and a half long tour about Boston in the early days. The tour was called the Freedom Trail Tour. The tour guide was amazing, he had energy, and was very very loud. He was also dressed up in colonial era clothing, and it was awesome. We went around the Boston Common, and went into the graveyard where John Hancock is buried. 

Later, we went shopping (as you might have guessed, my mother and I enjoy shopping, though I get tired of it easily, my mom can keep shopping forever), and I bought a pair of Crocs, that don't look like Crocs, so I can wear them to school. 

Then, we went to the most amazing part of Boston, the Printing Office of Edes &Gill. It's a colonial era print shop, where they printed the first Declaration of Independence that was passed out to the common people. The lady who was printing was really cool. She was dressed in the colonial clothing, and told us all about the printing that she was doing. When we were there, she was printing the Declaration of Independence, the way that Edes & Gill printed it in the 1700's. It hadn't been printed like that in 236 years. That was by far my favorite part of the trip. 

Today, we were supposed to go to Sturbridge Village, but guess what?? It's RAINING!!! It's like Williamsburg, and everyone's dressed up and stuff, but it's RAINING, so I don't know if we will actually go or not. :-(  (ToT)