If you read the post before this, you will know what I am talking about in this one. If you didn’t, I can still describe it to you, but for more in-depth detail go the the previous post. My dad and I just got back from San Diego, California, and we went there for the FLL Lego Robotics Open Championship, or just FLL Nationals. We had worked for eight long months for it, and now it had finally come. But this post is going to be more based on the LEGO part of the vacation, not what we did outside of it. I will definitely make more posts about that later. The first day of the competition was made more to familiarize everyone with Legoland, because many teams (like us) had never been there before. It was also mostly us just setting up our table in the pit, like putting up our presentation boards (project, core values) and putting away our robot so that we wouldn’t have to lug around the big suitcase with us all of the time. My favorite part of the day at Legoland, personally, was going to the place called Mini land. This was where they had made small recreations of famous places on the Earth, such as the Golden Gate Bridge, and the Eiffel Tower. They even made little ponds around some harbor cities, making them look like big lakes and oceans, and put LEGO ferries and boats in them. The only actual event that we had that day was one practice run for 10 minutes, which made all of the teams extremely angry. If you have such a huge campus, why not have some more tables and give us more than one go at it? At this point we had no clue that there were practice tables open, so we thought that this 10 minute practice was the only one that we were going to get. As it always does, the robot was messing up a lot of the missions that we were trying to accomplish at the competition. We only had a short amount of time to fix it, so we immediately got to working on it. After we finished troubleshooting, the day was over, and we went to the beach with my friends. Later that night I went to the hotel pool with all of my friends and we played there for around 2 hours. That’s all for today’s blog post. I hope you enjoyed this blog post, and feel free to stick around for more about this trip. There is also a lot more content all over this website, so feel free to check it out. Thanks for reading!
Our Trip to Legoland, California!
For the past eight months I have been doing LEGO Robotics with 5 of my friends. We have gone through regionals, state, and now, nationals at Legoland! We even received a letter from our congressman, Rodney Davis.
My dad and I just got home after the flight back to Chicago and the 2 hour drive back home, and we crashed right when we got home. But going back to the trip, when our flight landed in San Diego, we had to pick up our bag from the baggage claim and get our rental car for the four days that we would be staying there. Luckily, it was not extremely hot, because I had to sit outside for an hour until my dad could sort out the car we were getting with the agent at the counter. Finally, he came out of the building and told me that we got a pickup truck. At this point, I was bored out of my mind and I was really hoping we would get a nice car, but NO. He had to go and get the cheapest car. When we got out of the shuttle to the place with all of the cars, a nice agent who was asking us what we needed said that instead of a pickup truck, would you like a convertible? It looked something like this:
And my dad couldn’t have said no, because who would? First, we went to the beach and played around for a little bit, and then we went to our resort/hotel in Carlsbad, CA. We were right across from Legoland, and we didn’t have to stay in the overpriced Legoland hotel. None of my friends had landed yet, so we waited for a couple hours and then met up with them in our hotel. The first thing that we did was set up the presentation boards because we had our project and our robot design presentations on the next day. Even though it was just working at gluing and cutting out the slides, I still enjoyed working with my friends in a different place than usual. But it was getting late, and California time is later than ours, so we turned in for the night and went back to our own rooms. The next morning, my dad and I walked from the hotel to the Starbucks nearby, and we got a few sandwiches for ourselves (but that’s not important). When we were walking to Legoland, as it was right in front of our hotel, I saw the castle hotel and the rainbow hotel, but not actually Legoland! It turned out that it was in the middle of both of them, and the entrance was pretty small. That’s all for this blog post, but I will definitely write more about it. Thank you for reading, and if you enjoyed the post I have many more here on this website. See you next time!
Choose Your Own Adventure: Fortnite!
Hi guys and girls! I made another choose your own adventure, centered around Fortnite: Battle Royale. I hope you enjoy!
Choose Your Adventure in Fortnite: Battle Royale!
Seussical the Musical
Two weeks ago my class finished a musical that we had been working on for the whole year long. We did Seussical the Musical. Most of the people in our class did not like the idea of doing a small children’s play instead of a better one, but at the end, I think everyone agreed it was a pretty good musical. I was excited about it because there was one character I liked: Horton the Elephant. I am not the kind of person to say that they want to be the main character of every single show, but I felt like both of our personalities were kind of similar. So when we finally got to auditions before winter break, I chose Horton to do. And when I returned, it turned out that I actually did get the part I wanted! The only bad part of being Horton, though, was all of the lines that I had to memorize before the big show.
Because this was Dr. Seuss themed, there were all sorts of crazy things that you would find in one of his books, like an elephant sitting on a tree! First, we all had to make character sketches for what the characters should look like in the show. Then, we painted the canvases that would go on the crates that we had (big wooden boxes that we put paintings on) and we started making some of the props that would go with the characters during the play. After all of that was finished, we ran through the show song by song and checked all of the places that we were faulty at. But then we went through it all again to go even finer in spot checking. By then we all just wanted to finish the play and move on.
Finally, we started rehearsing the whole show in double-period music classes with the crates and the canvases on them. However, the music room was a very confined space and we did not have room to do some parts of the scenes. When we moved to the Parkland College stage, though, it became a lot better for all of us. We had rehearsals from the start of a normal school day and they ended one period after lunch. We went to the stage three times in a week, and it was getting stressful for all of us, especially the designer that put a lot of the props together. And then it was show night. I had practiced all of my lines at home and at school, so I was pretty sure I would memorize them for the show, but I was still really nervous. But later on stage, it was going well and I was really getting into the flow of singing and acting onstage with my friends. I am sure I will remember this musical for the rest of my life because it was so amazing. What an experience!
Thanks for reading this blog post. I hope you enjoyed it!
Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery!
I am a huge harry potter fan, so I immediately wanted to get the new game that was released. It is called Hogwarts Mystery. This game just came out today, on April 25th. All of my friends want to get it, because they are all fans. Although it is a weekday, my dad let me play for a bit just to get the feel of the game. And I love it! The animation for this game is astounding and I am surprised that they could pull it off.
It is an energy-based game, so you are not able to play the game in one go without spending money on more energy points. You start by meeting t a potential friend in the middle of Diagon Alley. He helps you with getting your things for the beginning of the school year, like the books that you need and your wand. Now, some of the people reading this blog post will have just zoomed past the wand part of the game, but I took my time because of all the vivid descriptions of the main characters in the Harry Potter series getting their first wands. You go through the first levels, and then you go to your first lessons at Hogwarts. Looking at this game, the gameplay is very addictive and you can keep going for ages, and not get bored of it. But anyway, that is where I will leave it today because I know that all gamers like to be independent and figure out how to play and what to do by themselves.
A Choose Your Own Adventure Story!
I made a choose your own adventure game, so tell me if you like it in the comments.
Defy. Fayetteville!!!
Today I am going to go to a place called Defy. Fayetteville in my cousins’ city. If you are wondering, that place is a new trampoline park. Even though we have a trampoline in our backyard as you have seen already, the trampolines there will probably be bouncier and more fun to play on. My grandpa asked me, “Why are you going there if you already have one at home?”
I replied by saying that I had never gone to one, and it was convenient because it is so close to home. I am going to go with my sister and my cousins because we only have a few days left here. My cousins just started school today, so we can’t see them that much anymore but we will go with them if they don’t have any homework. The good side of them having school is that it will be a lot less busy at the place. I hope you enjoyed today’s blog post, and I will be putting on more posts later. Bye!
Defy. Fayetteville!!! Part 2.
Good morning and welcome to part two of my blog post. Last night my cousins and I went to the trampoline park I told you about. And it was even better than what I said about it! There were probably 10 or more things to do in the complex. My favorite thing was definitely playing dodgeball at the very end of our time there. Because we could not go for as long as we wanted, we had 1 hour to play around wherever we wanted. My sister and one of my cousins were at the silk curtains for at least 30 minutes, where you had to use a lot of upper body strength to swing across the foam pit without falling. Finally, we went zip lining. I had to jump onto the handles because I was not tall enough, but I still did it because I practiced with a bar at home. All of us were looking forward to that, but it wasn’t really as fun as I had expected because it was kind of short. We were coming up on our time to go by then, so we finished by playing dodgeball. That was one of my best experiences that I have had in my North and South Carolina trip. Thank you for taking the time to look at my blog. I will put more posts up soon. Bye!
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Recently I traveled all the way to South Carolina in a car. It was a long 12-hour car trip, so it took us 2 days to complete the route. We stopped somewhere in Tennessee for the night in a Comfort Suites hotel and then continued our journey the next day. Finally, we reached our destination. By that time it was night, so we said our hello’s and spoke to each other for some time and then went up to bed.
For the next few days, we just lazed around, but then our three cousins came. They were only staying for a day, so we wanted to make it count. On the first day that we were all there, we started making a gingerbread house as soon as we could. It fell over afterward, but it’s the thought that counts, right? We all slept together in the playroom after staying up very late in secret. That was Christmas Eve, so we had put out some cookies for Santa and some water for his reindeer.
FINALLY! CHRISTMAS!!!!!! We all rushed down and gulped down our breakfast as fast as we could. We were about to open our presents when the parents stopped us and made us wait until one o clock to open them because my uncle was at work. We played some games together until 12:00 and then had one of the best lunches I had ever had: Cornbread and chili. And then we opened our presents after 355 days of waiting. I got a shirt, a guitar, and some more clothes. They had to leave that day, but we had 2 more days there. On our last day there, we had to get all of our things into the car, and boy was it hard to fit everything in! We were traveling with 2 more passengers, so there was even less space. But we made it to Fayetteville, NC. On the second day we were here, we saw our cousins and played with them. In fact, we even slept over at their house. It was New Year’s Eve before we knew it. We went out at 9 o’clock and partied until 12 o’clock. We got back and went straight to bed. And here we are, at this point in time.
My Friends Left!
Recently, two of my best friends moved to Florida. My mom and I were extremely sad to see them going as we had become very good friends with them over the time that we were in Champaign. I have been living here nearly all of my life, and I have no doubts that I will be here for a long time after this too! One of them was in my elementary school and he helped me adjust to it as I came into the school in the middle of the year. My other friend who was leaving wasn’t as close as the other one, but he still was kind and friendly. The good side of it is that One of my other best friends (as you can see, I have a very large friend group) lives a few houses down from me and we play together almost every day!
One of them was going to Weston, FL. Weston is a suburb just off of Miami. The other one is moving to Jacksonville, FL. The good thing is that we will meet up with each other soon on Thanksgiving at New Orleans, LA.
There’s not much more I can write on my friends without going on and on for a millennium, so I am going to stop here. Don’t forget, there more to come!
The End
(or is it?)
Band: TRUMPET!!!!!
Recently I enrolled in band class because I was interested in playing the trumpet. I like the trumpet because you can play high and you can play low. Now that I have it I play two instruments – drums and the trumpet. I sometimes play it on my porch because my mom does not like me playing it inside and I like disturbing other people in the neighborhood. Two of my friends are playing the trumpet too; their names are Daniel and Zhaoxin. Zhaoxin’s brother plays the saxophone so he can get her better at the trumpet as the sax is also a brass instrument. My dad did not rent the trumpet because after everything you need to do for it including the repairs and tax adds up to more than what the trumpet is actually worth. That is all I have to say about my new trumpet and I will be starting class next week. I hope you stay and read my next blog post and definitely check out my posts that I have done before this.
THE END