Author: 788280

I try grass volleyball

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I play on a beach volleyball team. Last weekend most of my team was in Alabama for a tournament but I stayed back with my friend and we were just going to do a local sand tournament. Unfortunately, we tried to register too late. So we ended up finding a grass volleyball tournament to play in. We were playing in the Women’s BB division, so it was my first time playing against women and my first time playing in grass.

I was expecting the people there to be pretty old, but it was mostly women in their 20s that were really really good. We lost pretty much all of our games but it was still really nice. In the morning the grass was super wet and I kept slipping around. I thought that grass would be way easier than sand but I was wrong because most of the time when I ran up to hit I just slipped and fell or I had to take a really slow approach. Also I got an allergic reaction all over legs and arms so I had little red dots everywhere. The dots turned into little scratches and it was very bad. But overall it was a good experience and I had a nice time. It was great to see how there was a little community of older volleyball players that could continue playing the sport after college.

Here is my partner and I about to lose a point

New things that I did during Spring Break

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Over spring break I went to Hawaii with my family. Here’s some of the new things I did while I was there.

I fell off a rock and into the ocean. I was climbing on a lava rock with my brother and I followed this crab and then slipped and fell. I got a lot of scrapes on my hands and legs but it could have been a LOT worse. I would recommend always staying on the dry side of a rock. Keep away from anything that looks slippery.

The rock my brother is standing on is the one I fell off of, I fell on the back side that you can’t see in the picture.

Saw lots of sea turtles. While I was snorkeling I came across a turtle every few minutes, and it was so nice to get to swim around them.

I also saw a rainbow eucalyptus tree. The tree is rainbow because the bark on the tree peels in different parts of the tree at different times. When the bark peels it reveals a green layer, and overtime this layer changes color creating a rainbow look on the tree.

Tried lots of new food. My favorites were papaya, macadamia banana french toast, I forgot the name of it but its pretty much sushi but instead of raw fish its spam, and raw coconut.

I touched an octopus. I saw an octopus twice while snorkeling, and after the first time I talked to one of the locals about it. He told me that I should just try to grab the octopus, cause that’s how he catches them so he can eat it later. Of course I wasn’t gonna try to grab it, but the conversation did help me realize that I could touch them without being hurt. So the next time I saw an octopus while snorkeling I pet it. The octopus would change color and texture in like a second, and it went from being white and ridged to purple and smooth really quickly. It felt exactly like you’d expect, and unsurprisingly I scared it and it swam away and spewed out ink. After that I felt really bad for bothering it, but it was still one of the coolest experiences of my life.

This is the kind of octopus I saw. It’s called a Hawaiian Day Octopus.

I did a lot other things in Hawaii that were not really new but they were still really amazing, so I’ll include some pictures in another post when I can (right now lcps blogs isn’t really letting me upload any more pictures).

Hosting an exchange student

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For the past ten days I’ve hosted an exchange from Singapore. I had such an amazing time the whole summit and I’ll try to write about my favorite parts here.

The first night I waited at the airport for about an hour while my student Randelle and the rest of the Singaporeans went through customs. I had to work on this DBQ for english so I sat down in a seat and worked on it, and this teacher from Lebanon ended up sitting next to me. She noticed that I was writing about the Ottoman empire so she went on to tell me all about Lebanon and its history with the Ottoman Empire, which was actually really interesting. When Randelle got here we went back to my house and showed her around my house. The official languages of Singapore are English, Chinese, and Malay, but all of the Singaporeans that came mostly spoke english and sometimes Chinese. Singaporean accents took some getting used to because they talk pretty fast and occasionally add -Lah to the end of their sentences. At first I didn’t know about the Lah thing so I was really confused.

all of the hosts and delegates when we first met them at the airport

Everywhere we went we were driven around by Melissa, and sometimes her driving was a little stressful. One time we left the trunk open and didn’t realize it for like 10 minutes. Last sunday, which was the second day we were there, we visited Dominion and went to a welcome party at someone’s house. I got to talk to some of the delegates but I mostly just got to know them by playing ping pong. My student really liked Dominion because she thought it was cool that there was so much open space where we live. Singapore is half the size of Loudoun county but has 5 million people living in it, so everything is stacked.

The next day we went to DC and all the delegations shared their cultural display boards. Every board had food from their country near it so it was great because I just walked around and ate. Singapore had these cool plastic bubble balloon things so I spent a lot of time there just playing with it. When we got to DC we were supposed to go the US history museum but it closed early so we ended up just walking around the monuments. By then I had gotten to know all of the delegates from Singapore so we had a great time taking those stop and pay scooters and scooting around on them without paying the fee. Once I picked up one and a siren went off from the scooter so I took a break and then ended up doing it again.

Randelle and the Singapore cultural display board

After DC we went to the Silver Diner and the delegates thought it was so cute because it had the juke boxes you could play music on. The next day I had to go to school but everyone else went to an opening ceremony at Woodgrove. After that we went to a Dominion lacrosse game, which was amusing to the delegates cause they got to see a bunch of kids wack each other with sticks. The next day we had a walking tour around Leesburg and it was so nice out. For some reason the school had some AP US history kids run the tour, and they ended up getting us lost even though we didn’t realize it. During the tour I got to talk to the Chinese and Romanian delegates more and learning about their countries was really really interesting.

Thursday was the assembly for Dominion where all the delegates were forced to do the flag march. I volunteered to hold the flag for Norway, which was actually such a good idea because I made friends with a Norwegian girl and she told me about some hilarious traditions in Norway. After that we went to a bonfire. Towards the end we got bored and began to set random things on fire which was amusing. On friday Randelle really wanted to go to Walmart and she actually spent 50 dollars on Oreos alone while we were there. In Singapore they dont have all of the different Oreo flavors so she promised to bring some back to all of her friends. After that we tried to have a bonfire at my house but we couldnt start a fire so we burned paper towel rolls and set the marshmallows on fire that way.

Saturday was the glow dance which was so much better than when I went last year. The glow dance while hosting is actually so fun because you can talk to all the delegates you already know and its much easier to make friends with new ones. I danced with the Norwegians and also this kid from the Netherlands named Robin who is moderately famous in his country and is a quote on quote rapper.

Sunday I went to great falls and Tysons. At Tysons we had shake shack which I had never had before. Monday was our last night with the delegates and we watched a movie and had burger 21. Everytime we ate out during the summit I had a burger so by the end I was dying. Tuesday night was the farewell dinner where all the countries had cultural performances that were really funny. The Singaporeans left after the dinner and I was so sad.

Reuben (a Spanish delegate) and Paul (a Chinese delegate) at the farewell dinner. I will miss them so much AAAA

I highly recommend hosting to anyone. All you have to do is share your home with someone and in return you get to learn so much and have an amazing time. I was super busy the whole time during the summit, but I was always enjoying myself

putting random foods in air fryer- pre blog

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This weekend Im going to put random foods into an air fryer, which is this cooking thing that looks kind of like a grill on the inside. Like a circular grill.. I will show a picture. It works by swirling hot air around the food which sounds exactly like a toaster oven or just a normal oven but my mom insists that it is not. I am very skeptical of the air fryer and I think it is a waste of money. My mom tried to make broccoli in the air fryer and it made the broccoli inedible and made my whole house smell really bad.

Formally, I plan on testing if the air fryer actually works, but really I just want to throw food in it and see what happens. Im going to try to put foods in there that wont start a fire or break the air fryer.

Watercolor landscape

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In art class we made a watercolor landscape, which is something that I had never attempted before. Usually when I do watercolor it is for backgrounds or for coloring people, so I this was a challenge.

sorry the picture is low quality

The hardest part about this was making the bushes realistic. I tried to put darker colors on the bottom and create texture, but I think it still looks pretty cartoony. The water wasn’t too difficult, and I used masking fluid to keep the white parts white while also not spending forever coloring. I actually enjoyed this project a lot more than I expected. Even though it didn’t really require much creativity or thought, landscapes can be really calming.

Top ten things to do with a stick, part two

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Here is part two of my ranking, this is on the bad end of the scale. This is the link for the article I am testing: https://childhood101.com/outdoor-activities-20-ways-to-play-with-sticks/

  1. Use as pair of drumsticks on a tree or rock to make outdoor music- This one was just banging a stick against a tree, depending on how angry you are this could be satisfying.
  2. Tie on a length of ribbon to create a wind streamer- The making of this one is the same as the fishing pole one, which goes to show just how fantastically versatile sticks can be.

stick wind streamer IN ACTION

  1. See how high you can build a stick tower by layering sticks on top of one another. – In a way, a tree is a stick tower.

  1. Paint them, with bright colors or pastels- I really pushed my creativity with this one

Beautiful coloring to create a rustic effect

  1. Practice your shapes numbers and letter using stick. – This wasn’t really the worst, the worst one was to create a frame for your nature art (made with sticks) using more sticks. I felt that my message in the writing was a great conclusion to this post though.

Very faintly, it says styx 4 lyfe

fully vegetarian meal out

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This past weekend I went out to ‘authentic’ and ‘non white’ Indian food with ANUSHA! (check out her blog it is very nice). I’ve wanted to try different vegetarian foods recently to see if I could actually have the will power to commit to being vegetarian, and going out to eat with my friend was a great opportunity to try.

The restaurant was buffet style, so I served myself just got everything Anusha got. First we got things like naan and different sauces to dip it in as well as cooked vegetables, lentils, and chickpeas to put in between the naan. I really liked this so I got it again. Then Anusha showed me this thing called pani puri, which were like little hollow crispy balls that you poke a hole into and then you put chickpeas and spicy sauce in it. These were cute and fun to make. I found out I like interactive food.

Heres a picture of pani puri

For desert we had a fruit custard with syrup soaked fried dough type things. This was my favorite part, the desert was so good.

Overall the food was great and in the future I may actually try to be vegetarian. I want to go to this restaurant again too.

Top ten things to do with a stick (part one)

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I found this article called 20 things to do with the humble stick, and I decided to try all of them and rank them. I did this outside with my friend (878351, check out her blog) and it was freezing, but I can say that I gained a lot of extremely useful knowledge on stick related activities.

Im ranking these from greatest to least. This is a little unconventional but I think that the ones that I ranked the least are just so bad that I don’t want to start off with them. Actually, Im going to leave out some and only rank like ten or so. PART TWO COMING SOON.

  1. (Highest ranked) Add some string to make a fishing pole. – You know, I think that using a stick to make a fishing pole is a great idea, but I think that to make it actually effective it needs more than just string and a stick. I wanted to add something that would make it sink at least, so I tied a walnut to it. Unfortunately this didn’t sink either. After this I gave up. However, making it was nice and I enjoyed myself

Picture on left= walnut. Picture on right= walnut in action

  1. Roast a marshmallow on a stick over fire pit- I didn’t actually try this but Ive done it in the past and it is very nice.
  2. Try nature weaving with a Y stick. – This was also nice (in the context of what I was doing), I think that it could have been better if I had woven more stuff into it besides string and a leaf.

4. Get into the holiday spirit by creating twig stars- I didn’t actually do this one but it is on the craftier side of the spectrum so it provides more entertainment than like banging a stick against a tree.

5. Play Pooh Sticks- This was a game where you throw a stick over a bridge and another person does the same then you run to the other side and look to see whose stick made it past the bridge first. Cora won.

Here is us about to throw the sticks.

TUNE IN FOR PART 2

Hosting an exchange student

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I am planning an exchange student for the youth leadership summit. This year I’ve been involved in Global Ambassadors, and I applied for a few exchanges as well. I always see people hosting but can’t really imagine doing it myself. I always worry that I would be awkward around them or they would get bored of me or something. My friend encouraged me to host though, and now I am actually really really excited. The prospect of meeting someone from a different country sounds cool but also a little scary, since its something that will be completely new to me. My goal for this year was to try new things however, so here we are.

I will write more about what the summit is like and my time hosting once the student gets here. I’m not sure what country I am hosting a student from yet, but I’ll update my blog when I know.

pathetic Christmas present for brother

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Usually for Christmas I get gifts for my friends and that is about it. My parents are really great with presents and they usually buy something for themselves and my brother and say that it was from me. This year though, I decided that I was going to try to get something for my parents and maybe even my brother. The parent christmas present thing kind of fell through the cracks, but I did get a bath bomb for my mom.

A few days before break I got a huge box of a dozen cup of noodles from a secret santa for one of my classes. Instead of keeping them for myself I decided to wrap them all and give them to my brother. Instead of wrapping the whole box though, I wrapped them very stealthily. I had a box that I filled 2 cups, wrapped some individually or paired with one, and put others in a huge box. I was so excited about this because I thought it would be hilarious when he sees that there are a bunch of presents for him but most of them were just cup of noodles. I was also pretty proud of myself because I spent no money on it at all. Now I’ve started a tradition where we get each other crappy gifts, and hopefully this is a good start getting actual gifts for my family as well.