The Old Man and the Sea

For one of my requirements this month, mom and dad are making me read the Old Man and the Sea. They got the idea from a South Park episode that I was watching and the teacher required them to read the Old Man and the Sea. They ended up hiring a bunch of Mexicans to do it for them and it was really funny but they wanted me to find out why the joke was so funny by actually reading the book. I've read to the part where the boy had to go on a different boat because the old man is unlucky and hadn't caught anything for a really long time and he went out one day and his hook caught a fish which just steadily kept on pulling the boat. He spends a long time in the boat and has a lot of memories come to him such as when he beat the record holding arm wrestler in arm wrestling and memories about him and the boy on the boat. He always talks to himself and keeps on saying that he wishes the boy was there. He's going farther and farther out to sea and has to catch his food on other hooks while still holding the line. The fish has already jumped out of the water as if to show him what he's up against and it just keeps pulling him. So far I wouldn't really recommend the book because not much really happens. There are a few memories which are kind of entertaining but all that's really happened so far is that he's sitting on a boat determindly trying to catch a giant fish that's pulling him further out to sea every second.

Huckleberry Finn Writing Prompts

I read the book Huckleberry Finn in March and this is my report that I did for it. There are about 4 different writing prompts in it so if it suddenly goes onto a new topic from the book that's why. Hope you like it!
Violence and greed are motives in Huckleberry Finn and are of great importance in the book. The two greediest characters were the Duke, and the King. They told Huck and Jim that they were a Duke and a King and made them treat them like royalty. They had to give up their beds and sleep on the floor. They came across these two men when they saw them running away from a group of people and let them stay on their raft for safety. Huckleberry Finn knew that they were frauds all along but didn’t say anything because he didn’t want to cause problems on the raft. They would go from town to town tricking people to get their money.
The first thing they did was rehearsed a play, Romeo and Juliet, and tried to make it good and everything but when they put it on for the town everyone booed and didn’t like it. After this attempt failed, they started putting on stupid shows and scamming people for their money. In one of their shows they got the Duke naked and had him run around the stage and do some kind of dance and they put this show on for 3 days. They attracted customers by saying it was men only show which would hopefully attract a lot of guys that thought they were going to get to see naked girls. It did and they only did it two nights, the third night, they knew they would have food thrown at them so pushed off on the raft. Another thing the king did was pretend to be a poor old man and told them about all of the things he’d been through but really he hadn’t. He said he had been the king of France but then came to the U.S. In the end it all came back to haunt them because one town caught them and put tar and feathers on them and then threw them in the lake.
Violence was also a big part of the book and made it more interesting to read because you never knew when someone was going to get hurt or die. In one part, Huck stayed with this one family who was in a feud with another and would shoot each other whenever they crossed paths. It has been going on for a long time and no one really know what it’s about. Even the kid that was Huck’s age was involved in the feud and got killed in the end. The daughter of one of the families was going to marry a boy from the other so they went out to stop them from marrying and ended up getting in a big fight that killed a lot of the other family members too. In another part of the book there was a ship wreck and Jim and Huck stopped to get treasures out of the captain’s room. When they got aboard there was a bunch of robbers on board that were getting ready to shoot a man. When they found out that Jim and Huck were aboard they tried to catch them to kill so they wouldn’t get the treasures. They couldn’t find the raft so they were stuck on the ship with the robbers with no escape. The raft ended up being at the other end of the ship and they got away safely.
I am not at all surprised that religious people would maybe think that Huckleberry Finn is a bad book and should be banned. For one thing, although it doesn’t have much to do with it, Mark Twain was an atheist so he sometimes made it sound like god wasn’t real in the book and they might not want kids reading this. In the very beginning, the lady he was staying with was trying to make him civilized and religious and he wanted to be with Tom Sawyer in hell. He never told the lady this but Mark Twain wrote about him thinking it all the time. Some parents might not want their kids reading about a boy that wants to go to hell. In another part of and the story, Jim got captured and Huck thought he would start being a good boy because he decided he didn’t want to go to hell but ended up deciding that saving Jim was more important than going to hell.
The whole time in the book, Huck was doing things that many would consider unholy. He was always rebellious and didn’t obey the people in charge of him. He felt bad about not turning Jim in but couldn’t bring himself to do it. Although now it would be good for him to not turn someone in for slavery, back when this book took place it was considered a sin to smuggle away someone’s slave. I think Mark Twain put this part of the book in to show that friendship is more important than supposedly going to hell.
I would defend Huckleberry Finn against being a racist novel because Mark Twain only used the word nigger because it was back when slavery was going on and calling someone that was just like calling them African American. Even Jim (who was black) would call other slaves the word and even himself one. It didn’t even seem like it was an insult then. The bad treatment of slaves in the book was also justifiable to write about because that was the reality back then. When they were trying to get Jim out of the shed he was being held in, Jim said that they knew better than him because they were white. This came up when Tom Sawyer was complicating thins trying to get him out and Jim questioned it and Tom Sawyer tried to explain it so he said they knew better. Slaves didn’t think that whites were better than them during the Civil War obviously so I don’t think he actually thought white’s were better but they were his friends. It also might be justifiable because Mark Twain was raised in the south.
All in all I think it was a great book and that it shouldn’t be banned and kids should be aloud to read it. It has good life lessons and is a suspenseful book that I enjoyed reading. One life lesson it gives is that you should never scam people for their money because your deeds will come back to haunt you. I learned this because although the Duke and King made a lot of money with their ridiculous shows, they ended up regretting their deeds in the end.

A Boy at War (Pearl Harbor)

I recently finished a short book based on a boy living in Hawaii and was there when Pearl Harbor happened. I think it's a fictional book but is obviously based on an event that really happened. There's a boy who's dad is in the navy so they're always traveling and are now living in Hawaii. His dad's ship is the Arizona, the one that took the most lives and damage during Pearl Harbor. He met a boy that's Japanese and he even goes to his house which is in a part that he's not supposed to go. Eventually his dad finds out he's friends with him and tells him that he can't be anymore. They end up sneeking to go fishing in Pearl Harbor which they're not supposed to do. They found a small boat hidden in some bushes and went out in the Harbor. After a few minutes of fishing an airplane comes in and drops a bomb on one of the ships and this keeps happening to all of the ships and there are a lot of airplanes but they think it's just a movie being made or something so are just kind of laughing. When they see the red circle's and figure out that the Japanese are attacking the main character attacks the Japanese boy out of impulse. When they're separated finally a Zero (the Japanese fighter/bomber during world war 2) starts shooting bullets at their raft and the other boy with them, the one that seperated them, get's a huge pencil size splinter in his chest. The main character (I forget the names, that's why I'm saying main character and such) get's shot in the back. When they get back to shore, the guy that has the splinter get's rushed to the hospital but there are tons of people scurrying around on the dock so it was hard to get him in an ambulence. The boy that got shot in the back stays because he isn't very hurt. He wants to go see if his father's okay so he get's in a raft and a sailor get's in and tells him to row to his ship. When they get there they have to stay on it in case the Japanese came back. They didn't so they pushed of and looked for survivors. The one's that survived were usually in terrible condition either by oil or from serious burns. When the raft was full and they got back to shore, they needed extra people to help with all of the confusion so they gave the main character a hat and machine gun and held back the people scurrying to get in. He then snuck away and got in a truck and headed for home to see if his mom and sister are alright. They run out of gas going through a corn field but he finds an abandoned jeep which he takes and on his way out sees a man with a parachute. At first he thought it was a Japanese paratrooper but then finds out it's just a guy that had to ditch his plane. When he get's back to the house he hides his gun and goes in to find out if his family's okay. After that all that really happens is that his father ends up being dead and they leave Hawaii for the mainland. I think it was a good quick read which gave good facts about what happened during Pearl Harbor.

Muse Article Summary: Octopi

Today I read an article about octupuses also known as octopi and was fascinated by how smart they are and what they can do. They've got over 200 suction cups on each arm and some scientists are thinking that they can have a mind of their own. They think that the octopus doesn't know how long it's arm actually is and that the arm can know things that other arms doen't know how to do. Their brains are roughly only the size of three walnuts but they are one of the smartest animals on earth. Most scientists would say that some kind of sea turtle is smarter which may be true but octopi are really smart creatures. For example, there was an aquarium and fish were mysteriously disappearing and they found out that the octopuus was actually getting out of it's cage and crawling all the way over to the holding tanks of the fish and then crawling back to it's cage. This is considered natural behavior because octopus are known to go from tidepool to tidepool crawling all the way. If they're out of the water too long, they will dry out and die so it isn't like they can live out of the water. In another case, a woman was feeding them and the shrimp were a little bit old and she went down the line of tanks feeding them and when she got back to the first one, it looked her in the eye and while maintaining eye contact it put the shrimp down the drain. In another case, a person locked the octopus in it's cage so it wouldn't crawl out anywhere and it remembered her face and whenever she passed by it's cage from then on, she got an accurate shot of water right at her. That proves that they have good memory. One of the pictures it showed was of an octopus with a huge shark in it's mouth and although it was a really strong animal, it couldn't escape from the octupus' amazing grip. They ran a test to see if they could find their way around and what they did was put a crab in different parts of the tank in a maze and at first they had it climb a wall and somehow they had the octopus momorize it's way to the crab then see if it could find it's way through the maze and it did.

My Thoughts on Homeschooling

Let me just start off by saying that all in all, homeschooling is a lot better for me than going to school. Yes, there are a lot of things that I'm going to miss, such as extracurricular activities like cross country and other things like school dances and seeing my friends every day. For me, the biggest good change is that I don't need to put up with all of the negative energy going on at school. I still get to see my friends, for example I hung out with my friend Jackson for a while yesterday. I also plan on lifting weights and playing tennis with Nick this weekend but I'm going to miss seeing them all the time. I hated getting up at 6 in the morning every single weekday and now I can sleep in until 11 every day. Going on all of these vacations is really making me want to do it again next year. You probably already know this but in the past few weeks, we've gone to Hawaii and Colorado and are going to France in a couple of weeks. I really can't wait for thatand we've been studying it a lot lately. We're reading 2 short articles about Joan of Arc every day and are doing a lesson of Rosetta Stone too. Mom and dad are already bribing us to do it again next year by saying that we'll go to Hawaii for 3 weeks. It's a short blog because there's not much I can say about it but I do want to keep homeschooling.

Scorpia

I've recently read a book called Scorpia and I'm going to give a quick summary and review of the book. Scorpia is about a terrorist organization which is called Scorpia who are working for a man that wants to get rid of the alliance between America and Britain. He's going to do this by having them send in a list of ridiculous requests to America such as they have to have no president and have to get rid of their military and they know that they'll never meet the requirements and they'll inflict the punishment on Britain. The punishment for them not meeting the requirements is that they'll kill tons of British school kids with a weapon called invisible sword. Invisible sword is that when the kids get their shots they have tiny gold spheres in them which have small amounts of cyanide in them so small that nobody could see them. The gold balls are unaffective if they just sit there but they are going to use sattelites to melt them and that will put a small amount of cyanide into their heart's, enough to kill them. Alex Rider is a spy who works for an organization called M-16. He goes to find out what Scorpia's about (this is before they know about Scorpia's plan) by going to the leader fo Scorpia's birthday party. He almost gets himself killed because he asks too many questions. One of the assasins working for him puts him in a room right near a canal which is due to flood. He ends up escaping through a narrow hole but he barely lives. This puts him against Scorpia right away but he is scheduled for a meeting with the leader who plans on trying to get him on their side. She shows Alex what M-16 did to his dad (they killed him) which gets Alex on Scorpia's side. He gets right to training on a remote island learning how to be an assasin. His first mission is to kill one of the leader's of M-16. She's really heavily guarded and he has to use a lot of clever tricks and gadgets to finally get to her but eventually he does and he shoots. She was being protected by an invisible barrier and he ends up setting off alarms and being captured. He's not really a killer because at the last minute when he was about to shoot, he had aimed the gun above her head. He then learns that his dad was an evil man and teams up against Scorpia again. He goes undercover and ends up finding out about invisible sword. They planned on setting off a hot air balloon which carried the sattelites that were going to melt the gold balls and Alex had to stop it. They ended up shooting it off and Alex grabbed onto a rope and pulled himself indide of it. Nile, the guy that tried to kill him earlier, tried to catch him and kill him but fell and died. Alex disabled the balloon and took an emergency parachute to the ground. All was well and nobody died. Since this was a relatively short summary I left out tons of details about the book and it's a lot better than I make it sound. I would deffinately recommend it and look forward to reading more from the Alex Rider series.

Skiing (day number 2)

This post is for a while ago but we've been so busy doing fun stuff that I haven't had much time to blog, bad excuse. We went skiing 2 days but the second day was way more fun for me than the first because I was aloud to go out alone and didn't have to wait for the girls and dad. I had mom's cell phone so we were able to stay in contact and I sort of knew the resort better than last time because we'd already been there. The first thing I did when I got there was head to the very top of the mountain which we were going to do yesterday but couldn't because we got there too late. You have to take up about 4 lifts just to get there because of how high it was. When I was going up the final lift to the top it was really windy and cold and it wasn't a lot of fun. When you got to the top you kind of have a feeling that you're no longer a part of the rest of the resort. It's completely different. Just getting your binding on can be hard because of how hard the wind was blowing. It's really fun though because there's no trees of anything, just a plain snow cap so you can go wherever you want. I headed to the left a ways but was afraid I would accidentally go into a double black diamond which I don't want to do because it has cliffs and other extreme terrain that I wouldn't be able to do so I started on my way down and kept on going down for about 30 minutes until I finally came to another lift. My plan was to spend most of the day in terrain park because I find that kind of stuff more interesting than just going down a hill. Dad had told me not to go down any black diamonds but when I went down the snow cap I couldn't avoid it but I did it good and only fell about once. I love the terrain park there because of how long you can just go down the hill on rails and jumps without having to go on a lift. I went down some how missing the superpipe a couple times but when I finally came across it and went in, it was really cool. It's not like it looks on T.V. When you jump into it you get going really fast and it's icy up the part going up so I was actually able to get air. In Ohio they just dug a hole and put snow in it and called it a halfpipe but for now on I'm just calling it a hole or trench. After a while I went to do a black diamond again since I had done it up on the top so I thought I could do it again and it did go okay with only a couple falls. They are officially my favorite kind of hill to go on, tied with terrain park. I love the challenge of steering around the moguls at high speeds and then if missing one ending up falling on your ass. Once I did this run I went to meet dad and the girls for lunch up about halfway on the mountain. We had packed a lunch so we didn't get one of them nice mac n' cheese bowls but it was still refreshing after all of the boarding. After lunch I mostly stuck to the black diamonds but my favorite was a run called the Outhouse. It was a super long black diamond with tons of big moguls and there was only one other person on it who took a break halfway down because of how long it was. It was a big confidence builder because it was an expert slope and I did it with very few falls. Near the end of our day it started snowing really hard and I had forgotten my goggles in Isabel's backpack so I went down the slope blind a few times but still got in some black diamonds. On my very last run, the park was closing and I was still way up on the mountain (about 20-25 minutes from the bottom) and it wasn't steep at all so I wasn't going very fast so a ski patrol guy gave me a lift down on a snow mobile. I wasn't lost or anything but I was scarred by the time I made it to the bottom the rental place would be closed and dad would get mad and as it turned out, the rental place was closing fairly soon. Later that day we had Beau Jo's for dinner and for some reason mom was a bit dissapointed in it that time. I thought it was amazing but I was also starving so anything probably would have. We're going home tomorrow and saying good-bye to Colorado. We're planning on coming back here next year for more skiing and hopefully moving here. Today we went to see Nim's Island and it was pretty good and we also had Mexican food for dinner. We also got dessert at our hotel.

Skiing Out West (sorry, we were too busy skiing to take pictures:(

We got up early today to go to Winter Park and ski. We had to get there early because it closes at 4 o'clock. The reason for that is because it can literally take hours to get out if you get lost. When we first got there we went to the rental place and it was a lot more proffesional than Snow Trails. Right when we walked in the door, they had our reservation ready and gave us our boots. At Snow Trails they just kind of hand you a board that they think fits you (I have my own snowboard now but used to rent) but here they ask for your height and weight and attach the bindings on after they look at your boots and make sure that everything's comfortable. We then looked at the map in amazment for about five minutes because there were tons of trails. I don't know how many but it would take me too long to count. When we first got on the lifts we could tell a difference between Ohio and Colorado, the lifts are faster but slow down when you're getting on or off. It only slows down the one chair and not the whole lift too which was convinient. They also had bars that you brought down onto your lap so we didn't have to worry about falling off. The actual slopes were much like Snow Trails except a bit more powdery. The scenery was also amazing. You could see only mountains off in the distance. We had to stick together so we wouldn't get lost and I didn't have my cell phone with me so I ended up having to wait five minutes every three minutes I skiied but I'm not complaining, it was still amazing skiing. There were also about three terrain parks (ramps and rails) and I got to go in two of them. It was really cool because they didn't only have metal rails but also wooden ones which I personally think are more fun. I was surprised because the kids weren't any better than me and if they were only by a little. I wasn't really trying to compare but I was just thinking about how my friends would say they were a lot better than us. Eventually Amelia's head started hurting so we went to a lodge that was halfway up the mountain and got mac n' cheese in a bread bowl with a powerade (there were 6 lodges throughout the resort just showing how massive it was). We also noticed that it was a lot better excerise than Ohio because the runs could be 30 minutes. We were planning on going to the very top of the ski resort which was way over 12,000 feet but it unfortunately closed at 3. After that it was near time to go so we headed back down the mountain which took us a long time because we were way up on the mountain at the time. At the bottom we had them hold our snowboards because we're going back tomorrow but brought our boots with us. In the car we drank all of our propel really fast because were were all thirsty from the exausting runs. I forget to tell about how I got lost, we were planning on meeting at a certain lift so I could go through terrain park but I got lost and was really far away from the lift so I went to where we decided our meeting place would be and I had to wait about an hour before they finally got to where I was. Later I had a turkey sandwich for dinner and the rest of the family had soup. Tomorrow dad said I can go off on my own because I'm going to use my mom's cell (I forgot mine at home because we were in such a hurry to leave). :)

Great Sand Dunes National Park

This blog is for yesterday because we got home so late.  We got up at about 8 o'clock and headed for the dunes.  We drove through Denver but when we got into the country, it was a lot prettier.  When we got there we had to go into the visitor center and learn how they were formed.  They were formed when the mountains eroded and streams carried the sand into the valley and piled up to make giant sand dunes.  They were about 750 feet high and we planned on climbing to the top.  It looked super easy and not very high but when you got on them, they shifted and it was steep so you had to crawl in a lot of places.  All of us kids ran ahead of the parents and the girls pretended to be super hero's and they'd have me cling onto the sweater that she wasn't wearing and they'd pull me to the top.  That was fine by me because it was hard work.  The sights were beautiful because we were surrounded by mountains that had snow on them and there were tons of dust devils everywhere.  The winds were really strong and could almost knock you off your feet.  It would also carry sand and it would feel like a thousand needles against your skin.  We'd then try to cover up and put our hands over our heads but this would just get sand in our eyes.  For about 5 minutes I was laying on the ground with tons of sand in my eyes with my hands over them, it wasn't fun.  After about 3/4 of the long hike, mom and dad stopped and waited for us while we went to the very top.  I was way in front of the girls the whole time and made it up about 5 minutes before them but they just had to beat me so they went about 5 steps farther to prove something.  I then ran down to where mom and dad were on a big drop off and did a front flip while dad to a picture of me doing it.  When the girls caught up with us dad jumped over the whole drop which was pretty cool and ended up landing on his face.  We all laughed while dad brushed of all of the sand.  We ran down some of it on our way back but ended up doing karaoke down most of it.  We made it down really fast and headed back to the car.  We all had sand in every crevice of our bodies so we went into the changing room to shake out our clothes and everything.  We stopped at a convenient store on our way back because we all had sand in our mouths too.  We wished we had brought a sled or snowboard because a lot of other people did it and it looked like a lot of fun.  It acted just like snow and was better than a normal sledding hill.  We also went up and down barefoot so that made it even more fun.  When we got home we went to bed right away and today we slept in until about 10.

Swimming and Rock Climbing

Today we got up, did all of our usual work, and debated what we were going to do with our day. It was between the recreation center and the tennis place and we decided that since we were already doing the tennis clinic a lot, we'd go to the rec center for our second time. Since the climbing wall didn't open until about 3, I was stuck in the pool but still had some fun. I like the little vortex thing because you don't have to swim to move so can just lazely go around in circles. I also like how the water's nice and warm so you don't have to worry about getting used to it (oh wait, isn't that a bad thing). We also went in the slide and did little tricks in it such as go backwards and do spins, the lifeguard couldn't see us so we didn't get in any trouble. I tried to go in the hot tub but they said I had to be 14, why 14, I think it should be when you become a teenager but I guess I could drown in the 3 foot bath. When it was about 5 til 3, I hurriedly got out of the pool and got my climbing shoes and harness on. Amelia and Isabel also went on the climbing wall this time and the first one to go was Isabel. She did the easy wall and made it to the very top. We were all proud of her because she made it. Amelia went next on the medium wall and did it really easily. I went on the hardest side there on my first try and got up pretty fast without any problems. It was weird because it was hard yesterday and simple today. Isabel also made it to the top of the medium wall even though she wanted to turn back, the guy showed her where to put her feet and she did it again. Amelia also went on the hard wall and made it to the top after a while. She had the same sensation as me, arms aching terribly. About an hour later you think it's stopped for good but then it aches for another couple days. I went on a couple more that are even harder than the hardest wall because you had to stay on certain colors and I chose a pretty difficult one. There was also a girl there, maybe about 18 who was really good at climbing and did it all the time and she went on the right side of the blank wall which is really hard and struggled a little on it, I made it to the top with a big struggle but I still made it. It was probably the hardest part of the walls there. The blank wall is the wall that doesn't have any of the other handholds and just has natural crevices. The holds could only fit the fingertips of your hands so I had to rely on finger strength mostly. We then went back to the house for a while and just hung out and went back to the airport to pick up dad from work. We then went to a pizza place called Beau Jo's which had the best pizza that any of us had ever had. It was a 5 pounder and the crust was freakin huge! It came along with honey to put on it so it also acted like a dessert. Since it's only about 5 minutes away from our house, me, dad, and Amelia walked home. Since we had been splashing around in the hot tub, the water level was so low that the jets were shooting water out of the water so we had to go bucket after bucket until it was completely full again. Tomorrow we're going to the sand dunes.