About a month ago, we were reading a book called the Last Cuentista. The Last Cuentista is about this family and they have to travel to a different planet. Because of this, my teacher wanted us to make up our own planet. We planned it out, and my planet was called Ombre. We wrote a story about that planet, and we built a pop up planet book. Our first step to making our planet book was we had to make nature pages. To do this, we put paper on top of some real nature and painted on top of it. After that, we put together our book using cardboard and our nature paper. After that, we wrote down our story and finalized it. Then, we pasted our story onto our book. Here is my book below:

A few months ago, an author name Adam Gidwitz visited our school. He talked about how he decided that we wanted to be author and how he always liked to write. He talked about a few of the books he has published, including A Tale Dark and Grimm, The Unicorn Rescue Society, and The Inquisitors Tale. He also talked about his newest book, Max in the House Of Spies. He also read us the first chapter. It was super good! This visit was super cool, and I am glad that I was able to experience this experience! Down below is a picture of some books that he wrote taken by me.

During spring break, my family and I went to Turks and Caicos. We were there from Friday to Thursday. On Friday, we woke up at 4:30 in the morning and drove to the airport. We got to Turks and Caicos at around 6:00 pm and we went to our hotel room, unpacked, and then went to get dinner. We went to a place called The Farm, and I got teriyaki salmon. It tasted amazing! The next day, we went to the beach. It was so beautiful. The sand was soft and white, and the ocean was the bluest I have ever seen! The ocean was calm, so it was like a big swimming pool! We swam and played in the water, we played football, and we played volleyball. We also ordered drinks and food at the beach. It tasted very good! After about 4-5 hours at the beach, we went to the pool and swam and I played football with my brother and dad. We went to the beach each day we were at Turks and Caicos, but one of the days, around 5:30 before we ate dinner, we went and took pictures on the beach with the sunset. The pictures were pretty! During the last few days of our trip, the water got VERY rough. The waves were so strong, that if you were standing right where the wave hit the ground, you would get crushed by it and would tumble in the water. This happened to my family and I very frequently. My dad tried to withstand the wave, because he was apparently, and I quote, ‘the wave master’, but the wave even crushed him. My brother was a bit scared to go in the water after the wave flipped him over underwater since he is so young. The restaurants that I recommend if you ever go to Grace Bay at Turks and Caicos are The Farm, BLT Steakhouse, Seven, and Mango Reef. Overall, this trip was one the most enjoyable trips I have ever been on! Down below are some pictures of my family and I at Turks and Caicos:

About two months ago, my grade and I went to visit the Moorhead Planetarium. We went on the school buses and arrived at around 11:00 am. We were planning to eat lunch at around 11:30, so my advisory and I took a walk in a beautiful garden trail that was next to the planetarium. The flowers and plants were so pretty since all the flowers were blooming. We took a lot of pictures on the way! Soon, it was time for lunch. We sat on some benches and ate our lunch. After that, we went to a space exhibit, where there were some fun interactive activities. Then, we went to see a dome show. This show was about mars, and it was amazing! It felt like you were moving through space! For our last activity, we went to a live physics show. The scientist there did some very cool experiments. One of my favorite experiments that he did was when he used liquid nitrogen to freeze a blown up balloon. The blown up balloon shrank until it look like a non blown up balloon. But when he took it out, the balloon blew back up to its original form! This trip was super interesting and fun, and I am so glad that I was able to go! Down below is a picture taken by my teacher.

A few weeks ago, my grade and I went to plant trees with Keep Durham Beautiful. We all planted our own trees but we were allowed to work in partners. There were different types of trees to choose from like serviceberry and magnolia. I got a serviceberry and I planted it with my friend. The first step was to mark a big circle with a shovel around the tree and dig a deep hole inside the marking. Then, you would take the tree out of the plastic container and smoosh the dirt that was connected to the roots. After that, you would put the tree inside the hole and fill the hole back up with the dirt that we just removed. Lastly, you would dump three buckets of mulch on top. Overall, this experience was very fun, and I would love to do it again. Down below are some pictures of us planting trees. These photos were taken by my teachers.

Thanks for reading!

In this blog post, I am going to talk a bit about the holiday that my family and I celebrated from February 25 to February 29 called Ayyam-i-Ha. Ayyam-i-Ha is a Bahai holiday that last for four days. It is a time of joy, good cheer, exaltation, being hospitable, helping the poor and needy, eating good food, having celebrations, and giving gifts. In the Bahai calendar, there are nineteen months, each of which have nineteen days. This adds up to 361 days in a year. The remaining 4 days are the intercalary days or Ayyam-i-Ha. Ayyam-i-Ha is also a time to prepare for the upcoming nineteen day fast that starts on March 1st. During the fast, Bahais ages 15-70 fast from sunrise to sunset. The fast is a time to detach from the physical and material things in life and to focus on the spiritual things. Down below is a link to a Bahai website that talks about Ayyam-i-Ha in a little more depth if you want to learn more:

An Introduction to Ayyam-i-Ha

Last weekend, me and my family traveled to Richmond,VA for a soccer tournament. We left Saturday morning since our first game was at 1:00 pm. Every time we have a game, we have to arrive 45 minutes early. We got there at 12:15, so we walked to the field. My teammates and I warmed up until it was time to start the game. We play nine vs nine, so our starting lineup was a 3-3-2. I started that game in the position left winger. Unfortunately, we lost that game 2-4. Our next game started at 4:00, so 20 minutes later we came back to the field and warmed up again. By the time we started the game, it was raining really hard! At halftime the score was 0-3 them. Then, we got a penalty kick and my teammate scored. Then they scored again so it was 1-4 them. Then I scored! Then my teammate scored! Then I scored AGAIN! Then, with five minutes left, we got a corner kick. My teammate blasted it from the corner and it went into the middle of the field. My teammate slid and scored! A few minutes later, the game was done. We had made a MAJOR comeback and the score ended 5-4 us! We were very excited that we were going to the semifinals, but we were also drenched. We got back to our hotel, ate dinner and played games. We had to go to bed at 9:30 because we had to be on the field the next morning at 7:15 am. The next morning, we woke up and ate breakfast. We drove to the field and played our game in 25 degree weather. Unfortunately, we lost that game. It was 2-2 until the last minute where my teammate slipped and fell. The other team took advantage of this and went and scored. Then the whistle blew. The game was over and we had lost the semifinals. Everybody was sad, but we all had a very good time at that tournament.

all photos by my family

During winter break, my family and I took a trip to Aruba. Aruba is an island that is close to Venezuela. On Thursday, we woke up at 5:30 and drove to the airport. There was a HUGE line for the international American Airlines flights and you were not allowed to use the kiosks. Now, some lines move quickly and you can get through them pretty quick because they actually MOVE. This line didn’t move in inch. We missed our flight that day (300 people missed their flight that day) and we waited in line from 6:15 am to 11:30 am. That’s more than 5 HOURS just waiting in line. The next day, we woke up at 5:00 and drove to the airport. That same line was still there. Fortunately, since we missed our flight yesterday, we could use the kiosks today even though we were flying international. We made it to Aruba and checked in to our hotel. We stayed from Friday to Tuesday. Over the following days, we did some really fun activities. On Saturday, we went to the beach. I loved the beach in Aruba because the water was so blue and almost clear. Also, there were no waves. You would walk ankle deep in the water and then suddenly it would dip down and the water would go up to your waist. The beach was kind of like a pool. On Sunday, we also went to the beach again because we liked it so much. On Monday, we went to the beach from 9:00-11:00 and then we rented a Jeep and drove to the national park. On the way, we saw a lot of cacti. It was funny because there was the cacti, and then next to it was the ocean. We drove to a cave and walked inside. There were bats in there! Then, we took a stop at this cliff. It was insanely beautiful and scenic. There was a cliff and below it was some rocks and the ocean. The ocean was so pretty. It was a dark blue and it crashed against the rocks. We took some pictures and then walked down the stairs and got to wade in the ocean. The sand was so white. The next day, we drove back to the airport and flew home. Overall, this trip was so much fun and one of the best trips I have ever went on.

All photos by my family

For the past few months, my Language Arts class have been reading wisdom tales. Wisdom tales are short stories that come from different places. These stories always have a moral or lesson that you can learn from and apply to your daily life. These wisdom tales tales could have the main characters as animals or humans and are very enjoyable to read. After we finished reading these wisdom tales, we all chose one story to personalize and make into a comic using Comic Life 3. I chose to do my comic about the wisdom tale The Useless Tree. This wisdom tale is about a tree with a twisted trunk and how nobody wants to use it while all the other trees in the grove are useful. Here is my comic down below:

About a week ago, in tech class, we were learning about Flipaclip. Flipaclip is an app that allows you to make an animation using drawings. You draw each little movement on a separate page to make a story. This is kind of like how in the olden days, people used drawings. Each drawing was a specific movement and when you flipped through the pages, it looked like a story. An example of a film that used to use this technique is Mickey Mouse.

In my video, I have the food from the song Chicken Wing Chicken Wing come alive. I used about 215 pages of drawings. Here it is down below: