Family Reunion Vacation in Lake Chelan

Our vacation began on Friday night. My mom, dad, and older sister packed into our car with countless bags. We were going to a place called Lake Chelan. I threw a variety of clothes of different fabrics and colors into a bright orange bag. We brought some food along with us. I made ice packs and dumped salt into them so that they would keep cold.

The drive was very long. For the most part it was at night, and I had to struggle to keep awake and read directions out to my dad while we drove. My sister and I were on "deer watch" trying to make sure that we didn't hit any deer on the highway, but my sister kept on falling asleep.
When we arrived, it was already past midnight. Everyone was sleeping except for my Aunt Yimei, who was giving us some directions to get to the house. We had an entire room to our own intermediate family.

In the morning, everyone joined upstairs in the dining room--my aunts, uncles, cousin, mom, dad, grandpa and grandma, and my sister. We went for a morning swim and got slightly tanned, much to my dismay. Lake Chelan was renowned for hot, sunny weather.
One of the highlights of the trip was going innner tubing on the Lake Chelan marina. We rented a ten-person motorboat (although there were eleven people) and dragged an inner tube behind us at high speeds. I went in the inner tube many times. One time, the boat went so fast that water and foam flew into my face and I had to hold my nose and close my eyes--in order not to scream.

Thankfully, I was still wearing my swimsuit. I had the good luck to stay in the inner tube, but my sister and uncle were flipped over in the inner tube. My aunt got into the inner tube without a lifevest (for some reason she had taken it off), and we had to pull her back in so that she could put on her life vest. It was lucky, too--for she and my uncle were flipped over and had to swim back to the boat. I was in charge of holding up an orange flag that let other boats know when people were in the water.

We played card games like Bohnanza and Democrazy, played Olympic-themed charades (while watching Michael Phelps swim), and went swimming ourselves. We ate cake and ice cream, and I hogged a great deal of goat cheese. Since it was very hot inside the house, my Aunt Huan made some great smoothies to cool us all off. Everyone took photos and we had an official photo shoot at sunset.

All in all, our family reunion in Lake Chelan was an excellent experience.

Adora Book Club

For all of you readers out there, I'd like to welcome you to my blog www.adorabookclub.blogspot.com. It's a blog where viewers can post book reviews in the comments section and I'll publish some of them on the blog. If you've read a book recently and you'd like to write a review, head over to the Adora Book Club!

Book Review of Flying Fingers

This is a book review written by my good friend Maya, who is a very talented author. Here's the review:

........

Flying Fingers is astonishing, considering the age of the author, seven-year-old Adora Svitak. A must-read, Flying Fingers is filled with enticing stories and poems that are surprisingly mature. Adora has proved herself worthy of praise and of the honor of seeing her name in print…so it’s no wonder that her fast and furious typing ceases only to allow the world to admire the literary masterpiece she has created. Meanwhile, after devouring Flying Fingers, Adora’s fans must await with anticipation her poetry collection, Dancing Fingers.

.......

Check out Maya's blog at www.funnygrape.blogspot.com!

New Quote

"Childrens' lives started going wrong when adults started diagnosing them."

By the way, these are my quotes and COPYRIGHTED. So get your hand off that copy-and-paste button, buddy.

Fake ad I wrote for a made-up medicine: Protorvia

I’ve been a cell-phone gabber my whole life! I’m a chatterbox sort of girl. But Type 2 musclodesklegenerative disorder, brought on as a result of excessive cell phone use, can make it hard for chatterboxes like me to keep their routine going. That’s why I was excited when my doctor told me about Protorvia. Protorvia is the once-a-month pill that will keep me on my cell phone for a whole month!

Quieter, fast voice while showing distracting images: Do not take Protorvia if you have allergies to peanuts. Do not take Protorvia if you have risk factor for excessive sneezing, as Protorvia may affect your nose and esophagus. Do not take Protorvia if you take statins. Some common side effects of Protorvia are bloating of the stomach, hair loss, migraines, sleep-boxing with amnesia for the event, strep throat, typhoid, tooth loss, mental sluggishness, slowed blood flow, heart attack, and full body paralysis. Death has been reported. Do not drive, walk, or breathe until you are sure of how Protorvia may affect you. Call your doctor immediately if you experience any sudden loss of life.

See how Protorvia can make the one-month difference! Do what I did. Ask your doctor about Protorvia today.

Quote

This is a quote I thought about myself when I was walking with my mom and my sister:

"Family and enemies are more important than friends. Family because they love you; enemies because they might kill you."

Obviously, that's not always true.

San Antonio travels

San Antonio, Texas

Our flight to San Antonio stopped in Phoenix, Arizona first. At the time the temperature in Phoenix was 113 degrees Fahrenheit. The Arizonans must have tough skins to live through such weather.

We arrived in San Antonio very late at night and caught a taxi to the Hyatt Regency, which was situated across the street from the Alamo and directly on the San Antonio Riverwalk.

When we arrived, the hotel—if you’ll excuse the cliché—took my breath away. There were swift transparent glass elevators, balconies on every floor with windows looking out onto the lobby and shiny polished everything. I could hardly wait to inspect our room on the tenth floor. Thus it was with enthusiasm that I leapt into the elevator up.

Our room was the average hotel room: two beds, one TV, a coffee maker with tea and coffee, bottled water—that was, for a five dollar fee—a desk, etc. However, we had a wonderful view of the Alamo looking out of our tall floor-to-ceiling windows.

If you are wondering what the “business” of going to San Antonio was, it was the NECC, or National Educational Computing Conference, as I have reminded my mother—alas—many a time. I was doing events there for various companies.

The NECC was being held at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, which was only a few blocks from our hotel (walking distance). Inside, the convention center looked bigger than outside. On our first day, there were very few people. There were some getting a drink or a snack at the concession and some talking here or there. It was a sparse crowd, compared to what would be coming next.

On the second day, it seemed as though every corner, nook, and cranny had been crammed full with people. People in proper business dress, people with bad hair days, people who frowned in their smiles, people who tried to sell you this after that, people who shouted loud above the crowd and waited by the exhibition hall to make sure that you’d been registered for the event. And the concession that had barely had business before? It was packed full in a tight line of people waiting to buy measly snacks at cutthroat prices. I admit with some shame that I was one of those people. However, unlike many of the others waiting in the line, I went healthy and bought a delicious banana-nut muffin.

But all that had only been the beginning of the convention, the prologue to the exhibition hall. The exhibition hall itself was filled with companies. The bigger companies had giant, showy booths with banners galore. Here, people did less of milling about and more of walking fast or stopping completely.

That’s enough of the NECC for now. Let’s move on to the “fun” stuff.

My mother and I decided to go see San Antonio’s famous Riverwalk. It was a slightly hot day. I stepped gingerly around. Jan Zanetis, from the videoconferencing company Tandberg, had told me that she had nearly fallen in. There were no rails to prevent such a thing from happening, I noticed. My mother kept me firmly to the side, away from the murky green water.

The Riverwalk was certainly touristy, but that had its benefits: it was filled with restaurant upon restaurant. We had plenty to choose from that night, but we were starving, so we didn’t have to walk too far. We decided to eat at a place called Landry’s Seafood or perhaps it was Landry’s Seafood House. It was fairly good food.

To sum the Alamo up in a nutshell, we were a bit disappointed. The building itself is smaller than you’d think and they didn’t have too many artifacts. While all those fighting in the Alamo died, does that automatically make you a hero? I’m sure that they were fairly brave, but who knows? Maybe there were some heroes on the Mexican side too. My mom and I decided to leave the Alamo and move on to the Institute of Texan Culture, or ITC.

In contrast to the Alamo, the ITC was very interesting. They had junior docents who were dressed up in period clothing and showed us how things were done “back then.” They made soap out of ashes and used that soap to clean clothes. I got to help with the cleaning part. There was an old-time schoolhouse with slates, chalk, and the famous birch (for punishment). Another thing I liked about the museum was that it was well-rounded; it had points of view from Czech settlers in Texas, from Germans, from Jews, from Danes, etc.

After going to the ITC, we had dinner with Philip Nelson from NewTek and his family at an Indian restaurant which even my picky mother said was quite good.

With an abrupt move back to our hotel, I must mention that it has quite a good recreational area. There was a rooftop pool, albeit a slightly small one, and quite a few exercise machines, all equipped with TV. I watched a History channel show about ancient torture devices.

Finally, it was with some regret that I got into bed for my last night in San Antonio. Tomorrow we would be departing for…

Boston, Massachusetts/Derry, New Hampshire

...to be continued

On the Degeneration of the American Culture

What sounds more exciting and interesting:

1.) A group of students slacks off in class, never listens to the teacher, spits gum and skateboards in all the places there are signs saying "No Skateboards" and "No Gum." They don't study for tests, shoplift in their spare time, are straight F students, bring concealed knives to class, and, after getting expelled in the tenth grade and forcibly reenrolled by their parents, they drop out of school and become violent thieves.

2.) A group of students behaves perfectly in class, always listen carefully to the teacher, take notes, and don't even dream of bringing skateboards or gum to class. They have shelves full of books on how to study right and always manage to memorize every single thing on the test. School is more important than shopping, they're straight A students, and, after graduating with honors from an Ivy League college, get high-paying jobs like accountants, insurance agents, and university deans.

I don't know, but I bet that at least some of you are going to choose the first one as the most exciting. (Let's hope that your own plans for the future are a different story.) Our present American culture seems to be such that the first would be glorified. Quite a few of the idolized rappers I've heard of have felonies or at least misdemeanors under their belt (and speaking of belt, I think that their pants are far too baggy too).

Please allow me to change the subject abruptly to sports. I have nothing against sports--except when it interrupts normal news broadcasts that I like watching. I was particularly displeased when NBC showed hockey instead of Nightly News with Brian Williams. Why can't they just make a hockey channel instead of halting the news? I don't know about you, but I see more stories about sports victories and murders than I do about someone who works hard at school and manages to accomplish their dreams.

Oh--and another sign of the degeneration of our culture? Watch the children's cartoons and shows on stations like Disney and Nickelodeon. In the good "olden days"--or at least during World War II, I believe--kids watched newsreels. They didn't waste the daylight hours watching far-too-brightly colored animated characters speaking gibberish in shrill high-pitched voices or phony acting.

This article may sound a bit conservative. I took a poll some time ago for fun. It was a poll on how old you acted. And guess what I got? 58-72.

Another story beginning written with Lincoln School, Costa Rica

Max Gil had always wanted to climb a mountain. He said that it didn’t matter which mountain it was (although he’d prefer a pretty high mountain), as long as he got to climb a mountain.
Max would spend hours in bed just dreaming about climbing a mountain. Max had a very nice room. The walls were painted dark blue and the curtains were made of silk and lace. Max had eighty-three building blocks, five boxes full of toys, drawers and drawers of beautiful writing paper, and lots of different things to amuse himself with. Still Max was not happy. He wanted to climb a mountain.
That was why he was so excited when his father told him that they would be going to Mt. Chirripo. In fact, Max jumped up and down and nearly knocked over the breakfast table. He bumped his head on the chandelier. The chandelier ended up on the floor and the candles all fell out. Fire streaked across the hardwood floor.
“Aaaaaah!” Max shrieked as his socks burned. Max’s father was laughing so hard that he didn’t even notice. Max’s older sister, his mother, and his younger brother threw water on Max and the floor. When they put out the fire, the floor was scorched and black.
“We’ll die of smoke inhalation if we don’t get out of here soon,” Max’s father grumbled as soon as he saw what had happened.
“Let’s be off to Mt. Chirripo!” Max shouted.
“That’s a good idea,” his father said, and they skipped breakfast. They did, however, take along some hardboiled eggs and some bread. Little did they know how much they would need it.

Later that day they arrived at Mt. Chirripo. They were all rather tired from the long drive in the car.
“I can’t wait to climb a mountain, I can’t wait to climb a mountain, I can’t wait to climb a mountain,” Max chanted. His older sister slapped him on the cheek and Max stopped chanting. It was only then that Max stopped to look at the beauty of the mountain. They were very high up and the air felt different. Max stared down and found his heart plummeting. They were so high up that he was already getting nervous that he would fall off the edge.
“Careful, Max, or you’ll fall off the edge!” his father shouted. Max jumped back immediately. That had been exactly what he had been thinking, after all.
Finally, after getting all their food into bags and getting everyone organized, they began the long walk up Mt. Chirripo.

Beginning of a story written with Lincoln School, Costa Rica

On June 9th I had my first videoconference with a school in Costa Rica, the Lincoln School. I gave two presentations on Inspirations for Writing. During the second session, I showed them how you can easily start writing a story using simple inspirations. The beginning of this story was inspired by the ideas "carnivorous plant" and "monkeys." I would love it if the students of the Lincoln School wanted to continue this story, copied and pasted the beginning into the "comments" section, and gave it their own ending. Here is the beginning of the story:


...........

The town of Saitam was not known for being an exciting place. Nothing much ever happened there. It was a very small town, with two restaurants, one post office, one school, and twelve houses. The people of the town had to get their groceries from another town four miles away. Saitam was so small that it wasn’t even on the map.
But something would happen to change all that.

There were lots of monkeys in the rainforest by Saitam. They made fools of themselves by making loud noises and throwing bananas whenever people walked by. These monkeys, however, were smarter than most of the other animals in the rainforest, so nobody bothered them too much.
There was a certain plant in the rainforest, near the area that the monkeys played. The monkeys played in a small clearing where there were not as many trees but plenty of interesting plants and insects to observe. At first, the plant in question was hardly noticeable; it looked to be little more than a shrub. But within two days, it had grown to be eight feet tall. Even the monkeys kept away from it at this point, for the plant was carnivorous.

Musical Preferences

When giving presentations via videoconference I am sometimes asked what my favorite kind of music is. At those times I will usually start off by listing the types of music that I dislike. This, for me, is a great deal easier than listing the kinds that I like. I will list for you here some types of music I dislike, in order of most disliked to "I guess it's sometimes okay" position:

1. Rap. I'm not even sure if rap can qualify as music, but anything that a majority of the United States teenage population likes probably isn't intelligent talk radio. I've taken to doing rap parodies to annoy people, namely my older sister. Whenever I come into the room she blasts Soulja Boy on, high-volume, in order to annoy me back.
2. Pop. As in today's pop, like Avril Lavigne and the Jonas Brothers. I would describe it as "high-pitched wails, clashing vibrations of shallow idiocy, and altogether unpleasant." I know that I'm probably offending quite a few people here.
3. Country. Country music may have been okay in the past when the subject matter actually seemed realistic to the time period, but now it's not so great.

By the way, I am aware that I'm probably offending quite a few people here, just in case you were wondering.