i wish we all could be california girls

thursday: today, i woke up at 3:45 am. this is because my mom, my sister, and me are going to san diego for my dance show! i'm missing thursday, friday, and monday of school. partly i'm happy, but i'm so stressed out. on the day i come back, i'm taking a science test, history test, spanish test, and geometry test. that's a test in each class, which i think is a new record! sigh.
today, we are staying with my cousins, allie and adam, and my aunt rosie and uncle michael in redondo beach! i'm so happy, i haven't seen them since summer.

you may think la salsa is a dance...
but, actually, it is where we went for lunch with uncle michael. there are a whole bunch of restaurants called things like "del taco" or "la salsa." creative names, i know. the fact that it's in a different language makes up for that. there was a salsa bar, and usually with salsa bars, i just get one salsa. but, above the salsas it said "mix the salsa to make your own!" it was hard to decide since i liked a bunch of them. at first, i got a chipotle sauce. that's when i realized that it said medium spicy, so to make it less spicy, i added some mild salsa. i ended up with a chipotle, avocado, and mango mix. i learned a lesson today: 3 good things added together can equal a catastrophe. after trying it, i threw it out and got them separately instead.

cold stone creamery, watch out! there's something called yogurtland... it.is.amazing! you get a huge bowl and fill it up with heavenly frozen yogurt! vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, ny cheesecake, mango, double oreo, green tea, blueberry tart, vanilla wafer.... and then you can get vanilla and chocolate combined, strawberry and ny cheesecake combined... i could go on and on, but i won't. first, of course, i had to taste almost everything in the store. but, it wasn't too embarrassing since the one worker was in the back. i just took some tasting cups and tried them one by one. after some contemplation, i finally decided on strawberry and ny cheesecake (not the combined version). that's when it got even more overwhelming since there are a whole bunch of toppings to choose from! but, with the strawberry and ny cheesecake froyo, i couldn't resist the real strawberries and real chunks of cheesecake. how awesome is that? and all for $2!

it's almost like exercise...
they have wii fit, and we were playing on that for a while. by the way, i would just like to tell you that ella's wii fit age is 28, and mine is 13! ella's age is 20 years off, mine is a few months off. pretty good right? my mom would like me to tell you that "ella didn't understand the balance activity and if she retook it, she would have done better..." cough cough. me and ella like the hula hooping game. well, more like the hula hooping movement. if you are trying to imagine what i look like hula hooping on a wii fit, let me tell you... it looks very stupid. standing in front of a tv doing circular hip movements is just not normal. but, it is surprising, hula hooping for 160 seconds can be more exhausting than you think. i was out of breath and sweating after trying to beat ella's record breaking score. i didn't beat it. i'm so out of shape.

warm enough to wade...
it's october, and we went to the beach! me and ella even went into the water. it was freezing cold! the waves were humongous, and i took the pleasure of pretending to run away from the waves screaming to make ella run in horror. she even fell for it 7 times. before we left for the beach, i decided that i wanted to carry the boogie board all the way to the beach, and in the end... i only boogie boarded once until i wiped out, and sand got everywhere. my ears, my nose, my hair. it took forever to get the sand out of my hair!

inner peace, outer screams...
after that i did wii fit for a while more. that whole time, allie and ella were behind me styling adam's hair in front of the mac camera. it's difficult doing tree poses with a whole bunch of screaming, but i did it. the wii told me to take a 10-15 minute break, which is when i run over to mom saying "it told me to take a break" then run straight back to keep going. strangely, i got 4/4 stars on the strength exercises, but i got 1/4 stars on the balancing ones. they called me a bodybuilder... hehe.

friday: great, i'm sick. i think it was either the ice cold beach water, or the wii fit overload. i can't be positive. but of course, i was just fine when it was time to drive to legoland in san diego! the ginormous lego sculptures are crazy!

stories from the land of brick...

this was in the parking lot! since this was the first lego-built thing that we saw, we were really impressed. but... we all agree that they are a tad creepy.

AHH! i was debating myself on whether or not to smile for this picture. i decided that it would look more realistic to put on my "oh my god" face.



there was this driving school ride where you can drive around and "follow the rules of the road." it probably doesn't sound that fun right? but actually, it was really fun. you get into these cute, small cars. it's better than the other driving rides in hershey park and disneyland since they aren't loud and smelly, the pedal and wheel are easy to use, and you can drive around without being guided by something on the ground. actually, i had a dilemma when i was driving around. there are stop signs, but the roads are so small that you can see whether or not there are cars coming. do you stop? or just go... i stopped anyway, just to be a good driver.

outside of the ride, there is this life size lego car! since it's legoland, you would assume that everything is made of lego. but, from far away, the car still looked real!

say cheese! this is me and ella posing for a photoshoot with a movie star (from a lego movie, that is).


there was also this boat school ride called skipper school where you can drive a boat around. my only complaint about this one is that it goes super slow. honestly, these rides would be so much more appealing if their names didn't include "school."

we also went on this completely tame dinosaur roller coaster. my mom was telling me how annoyed she was that the people behind her kept screaming into her ear during the tiny drops. i mean, they weren't even drops, more like bumps! there was another roller coaster that was called "test track." at first, me and ella weren't really into going on, but my mom convinced us to go on. you know how on roller coasters, there's that slow incline before the big drop? when we were going up, i was seriously hyperventilating. but it was so awesome. it was jerky like a real test track, and we ended up going on it 3 times (since there wasn't any line).


we went on this ride where you have to pull the rope to get up, then when you let go, you fall back down. it's not like you are pulling your whole weight, but it was still hard. falling to the bottom was a disappointment too. it was more like exercising than a ride. :(


this dragon and the big car are probably my favorite. seeing them in person is even more impressive. they use these tiny legos that are like 1cm x 1cm. do you see ella standing right next to the giganto horn? i have no idea what she was thinking. it was like she was waiting to have her ear blasted out. we left before it made any sound anyway.


this slide was amazingly fun. we went on it 2 times. the only thing was that it makes you completely staticy!


ok, this is totally random right now, but i just had to show you. when we went to the bathroom, i saw the most hilarious bathroom sign ever!


here i am, battling evil. you're welcome.

my favorite part of legoland was definitely the miniland. it was so cute, and very cool. they said that it was built with 360,000 lego bricks and it weighs 718 pounds! i took a whole bunch of pictures, but i'll just show you some.

here is washington dc. check out that bus on the bridge. the buses, cars, and boats actually move. it is pretty cool.

i thought that the "states bank" engraved into the building was cool. i like the limo, too (hehe)

this is the inauguration!! that looked like it took a lot of work, with all of the people. if you look closely, you can see obama! he is wearing a red tie, and his hand is on the bible!

it was pretty cool how there were moving carousels and buttons you could press to make noise... and this fountain was actually like a real fountain! i'm just a little disturbed... when i looked at the people up close, one guy lost his head! but, i mainly wanted to post this picture to comment on those monstrous pennies.

time square! i was born in new york, so my mom took a picture of me in front of this. but, we weren't exactly sure what the spiders on the buildings were supposed to be. i guess it's the halloween theme!

the lego store is awesome. there are boxes of legos of all different shapes and sizes. we stayed there for 30 minutes only for me to buy 93 cents worth of legos. i'm easily overwhelmed as you have seen (yogurtland, now this!) we stayed at legoland from 10 am-5 pm, which was the whole time it was open. for dinner, we went to the all holy in-and-out burger! i have been looking forward to going there since i left california last time. but i couldn't enjoy it with my sore throat. i'm sad now. now we are in the hotel, but i only have "0 days, 23 hours, 15 mins, 57 seconds" left of internet time. well, i'm not counting on spending 24 hours online between tonight and tomorrow, but i'm tired... so, talk to you later! from...


saturday: today we went to the san diego wild animal park! this was only my 2nd time going, but i love that place. the animals can run around this 12 acre span of land. it is so amazing. on the african safari, where you go on a tour around the animals, they said that they keep the baby cheetahs in the same area as the other animals... i thought that was sort of dumb, but my mom says that they probably keep them more far apart. the camera ran out of battery in the middle of the tour, but i still got some pictures.


this is one of the baby cheetahs that i was talking about before. i think he is super cute! all of the cheetahs there were babies... i don't know where the adult ones were.


here's a white rhino. the tour guide said that his head alone can weigh as much as 1 ton... wow. i weigh 3.25% of that (yes, i used a calculator). no wonder they just sit around all day.


two ostriches! i thought this was a cool picture. they're drinking water together... or they could be having a tete-a-tete. :)


giraffe! i have always liked giraffes. during the whole tour, the guide was saying that animals see brown and green as the same color, so the giraffe wasn't easy prey. but, it's so big. how could you miss it?

there was this cool new "exhilarating" zip line ride over the land with the animals. i was really excited by that... but then i figured out it was $70. yeah, that was out of the picture.
i liked the gorillas. you know, they actually do beat their chests! it was hilarious. the tiny monkeys were really cute doing the monkey bars. i had to tell ella that they were better at monkey bars than she is. i guess i just like primates. :) we left early in the afternoon so we could go to the hotel and rest before the culture shock san diego 10th anniversary choreographer's showcase. it was really cool. actually, the best part was the last half. and that's when ella fell asleep! it's weird where she falls asleep: she fell asleep in the front row of a dance show once, with bursting music (where the dancers could literally sweat on her), but she stayed awake during my munchkin appearance during a wizard of oz off broadway show.

sunday: today, my cousins allie and adam, my uncle michael, and my aunt rosie came to san diego for my dance show. but, before the show i was really busy with techs and rehearsals. i'm part of a dance company called culture shock dc, with two youth groups: future shock dc is for ages 12-17 and mini shock dc is for ages 7-11. i'm in future shock, but i used to be in mini shock. so, since mini shock needed more people to perform with them, i got to perform with both mini shock and future shock! which basically meant twice as much rehearsing. luckily, most of the mini shock rehearsals were when future shock was taking a break.

busy b...
first, i had a future shock tech on the stage. after that, while future shock watched other groups' tech rehearsals, i had the tiniest bit of time to eat a bagel. i came back to the theatre in time for more future shock rehearsal. then, when future shock left for their lunch, and mini shock came, i went with mini shock for rehearsal. after the rehearsal, we went to the stage for our tech rehearsal. during the tech, future shock came to watch our tech...... phew.

a cool park in the middle of nowhere...
then, i had one period where there wasn't anything i had to do with either mini shock or future shock, so i got to go to a mosaic park in escondido with my mom, sister, cousins, aunt, and uncle! it was so pretty. there was a cool (yet super easy) maze to the middle of the park where there were a bunch of sculptures. around the sides, there were...shiny snakes? big colorful worms? i'm not sure.









after we went to the park, i went to a future shock cast meeting before the show.

gotta wait for the dvd...
since future shock performed in act 1, they got to watch act 2. but, since mini shock performed in act 2, they got to watch act 1. which meant... i didn't get to watch any of the show! but, down the hallway from the dressing rooms, there was a room with a screen that had the show live. so, in our free time we got to watch the show.
there were bowls of candy in each dressing room, so the plus of performing with both groups was more candy! there were nerds, tootsie rolls, and lollipops in the future shock room, and there were whoppers and sugar sticks in the mini shock room. ok, i'll be honest. i stuffed some (or a lot of) candy into my backpack pockets.

the moment you've all been waiting for...
the show was so much fun! i would post a video on here, but it's prohibited, according to the directors to preserve "artistic integrity". not that they would ever see my blog or anything... anyway, the future shock theme was "futuristic." it makes sense, right? future shock? futuristic? hmm... i probably didn't have to point that out. it was sort of hard to tell what our theme was. the songs sounded pretty techno-ish, and our costumes had silver, but i guess it's pretty hard to guess. i thought this one dance was really cool, where there are different groups doing different dances to the same song, and they are coming on and off, and some are doing it at the same time. there was a contemporary part, an african part, a wacking part, a popping part, and a housing part.
the mini shock performance didn't have a theme. our costumes were lime and true blue. i could only dance in the 3 dances i knew from last year. it was awesome dancing with mini shock again. i totally miss it.

mmm... buffet...
my parents say that it's not worth it to bring me to buffets, since i don't eat that much. but i am in love with souplantation! we go there every time we come to california. as you can see, all of my favorite places to eat are in california. souplantation, in-and-out burger, yogurtland... and out of all three of those, there can't even be one in maryland! sigh. i always look forward to the unlimited soft serve and the yummy strawberry lemonade. at the souplantation in san diego, they even have warm fudge brownies to go with the soft serve... mmm.... i can almost smell it! then, we all drove back to redondo beach. i was super tired, and i fell asleep in the car.

monday: we flew back to maryland today. we had to leave for the airport at 11:20 am... yogurtland opened at 11:00 am... could we make it? of course! it's yogurtland for crying out loud! i figured out that i like pumpkin pie froyo, and i like blueberry tart froyo, but they don't taste good together. it's like la salsa all over again! anyway, ella was really excited that there were those personal tv's on the airplane. that's always her first choice of entertainment!

if it's required, is it really volunteering?

SSL. or as my mom says: forced volunteering. we need 75 hours of student service learning to graduate from high school, and trust me, it isn't hard to find something to do... there are a ton of options.

my mom thinks my school is just looking for free labor by asking us to take phone calls for them during the summer. thankfully, i have found much better things to do with my time. i worked on the virginia obama campaign (first photo), ran a food stand at a school event, collected trash on the bay, made origami to donate to a children's hospital (second photo), and even poured lemonade into cups.


the worst part is filling out the "reflection" sheet. we have to write what we learned about ourselves and how we helped the community. it's hard to think of things to write. hmm... collecting trash: i learned that i will never do something like that for fun. pouring lemonade: i helped the community by making sure that they didn't die of thirst.

recently, my mom forwarded me an email, with the subject being: [Fwd: [pylenet] Looking for Teens Interested in Reading]. i was already thinking, oh my god, what was she thinking. i reluctantly opened the email, and saw that nearby libraries are giving SSL to teens for reading new books (that haven't even been released yet) and writing reviews for them. it doesn't sound bad, so i'll be doing that.
 
i'm currently doing two other projects. my friend lisa and i are doing a collaborative project, making the cutest origami stars. they are really simple to make. we have already made more than 1,000 of them! our plan is to put them onto necklaces and bracelets, sell them at our school, and donate the money. then, i had the idea to make earrings with wire and beads, and sell them at the same time. ella helped with some of the designs, and left the wire work for me. 

here are only some of the earrings i made after 16 hours of wire work:

these are the big earrings that i made. they have big glass beads, some of them with other little beads. in person, you can see the silver inside the glass. i could only make some, since those glass beads cost a lot! i'm selling each pair for $7 each, and the smaller earrings for $5.




here is one of the small pairs. when we went to the store, i fell in love with the colorful, floral glass beads in the picture. so, i got the square, cube, and cylinder ones. i guess i went a bit overboard, but i couldn't help myself!

this is a design with three beads. the hoop around the circle is a separate bead. i made hoops with many different things inside: squares, tiny clear beads, turquoise beads, etc. you might be thinking that i am crazy for spending my free time making different versions of hoop earrings, but it is much more fascinating that you would ever imagine.

yes we candy!

hi loyal readers of the infrequent trizzle,

thanks for checking this site often enough to see this post (my last one was on august 8th). you may ask, what has happened since then? broken hand? buried under schoolwork? blogger's block.

THE SHORT:
august: trips to scotland, thailand (touring northern thailand), going to the pool.
september: the month of nothingness... except for school.
october: debate awesomeness (4-0, 2nd place team with jessica and tori, 10th place speaker). grandparents visiting. obama campaign in northern virginia. ami visiting and dressing up as obama on halloween. traveling to atlanta with minishock. having my parents send me off by myself with a cash bribe to do so.
november: david's bar mitzvah and the kennedy center in the same day! california and historic election! craft night.
december: of course... christmas!

THE LONG:
barack-o: ami is my mom's friend from college. he lives in thailand, but he's not thai. he was here for two weeks to work on the obama campaign in virginia and i did too because maryland always votes democratic. on election day, they called obama the winner in maryland with exactly... 0% of precincts reporting. i made phone calls to people who'd already been called a few times so they were pretty angry. from this, i've learned that if you don't want to be called anymore, just say that you are voting for mccain... and they will stop. the last time virginia voted democratic was when lyndon johnson won the state in 1964. if the math is too hard, it has been 44 years. 44 YEARS.

i always want my parents to dress up for halloween, but they never do. my mom always says she's not that cool. but this year, we were thrilled to have ami come with us. he combined trick-or-treating with canvassing by dressing up as obama! it was kind of a last minute thing, so we saved money and printed out a picture of a mask. he wore a suit, obama pins and all that jazz. the tough part was finding out who was for obama and who wasn't. one person said, "that IS scary!" other than that, most people seemed like they liked it. at each house ami would say, "yes we candy!" or sometimes, "we are the trick-or-treaters you have been waiting for." the cherry on top was the deep obama voice and dramatic hand motions.

david's bar mitzvah: since i had a performance at the kennedy center on the same day, i missed the whole ceremony. it was disappointing because the ceremony was shortened, but i missed it!! i guess i will go to unshortened bar mitzvahs from now on. i only got there during the after party. i missed all the big hats but i got there early enough for the sumo wrestling. there were gigantic sumo wrestler suits and wigs. it looked hard to walk (or move) in them. i didn't have the nerve to play, but it was interesting to watch.

got hope, but wish i could vote

hi everyone!

sorry that i'm not keeping very up to date on my blogging... but for my birthday, on january 23, my family and i went to manhattan, new york, where i was born. we walked a lot and it was freezing cold which was a bad combination. my legs basically went numb if i walked for more than 7 blocks. the bagels at Ess-a Bagels were really yummy. we trekked 14 blocks each way from the hotel to get them. it was worth it though. weirdly, i felt VERY lucky to ride the subway, where my legs could thaw. but... in some of the subway stations, the escalators were broken, so we had to climb about 10 flight of stairs (over 100 steps, maybe 200). also in the subway station, that was much more dreadful, was a man who was playing violin to get some money. but it was the equivalent of fingernails on a chalkboard. after we passed, my mom whispered, "you're WAY better than he is." and i was like, "um, YA!"
my dad and i saw the musical, "legally blonde." i thought the acting and dancing were really good but the songs weren't very original. most of the songs had "ooooh my god" in their lyrics. during this time, my mom and sister were at m and m world admiring m and m's dressed like the statue of liberty and saturday night fever's tony manero. there was even a scanner that told u what color m and m u are. when i was at the musical my mom and sister also went to the american girl doll store for the 2nd time that weekend.

we went to a store with gigantic stuffed animals and lots of candy called FAO Schwarz. there were really big pink stuffed dogs lined across the wall, twenty foot tall dragons and life-sized mythical creatures from the harry potter novels that were really freaky... to me at least (i'm easily scared.) there were also some people who were dancing on a keyboard mat. it was actually really impressive that they could jump on notes together, so from that you could tell that they had to be working for the store and weren't just kids playing for fun.
for my birthday i got a 2nd DDR dance mat from my cousins. and i got a digital recorder from my parents. it's a really good gift for me because i can record how my violin and quartet sound.

i've been playing a lot of violin lately especially because i've been playing with a quartet for the solo and ensemble festival next month. the music on its own isn't difficult, but when we play as quartet it's hard to stay together because we play at different speeds on our own pieces. i cue the quartet, as to when to start playing, with the scroll of my violin. but not just that, but i get the "honor" of sniffing (loudly) a beat before we start because our cellist can't see me since my stand is in the way. my quartet is going to play minuetto by bach for the festival. so sometimes my mom and i say "you bach!" as a pun on "you rock!" i haven't decided yet what solo piece to play though. i'll probably do either a bach minuet in G or a baccarini piece.

i was really excited because i got to see obama speak at the comcast center, at the university of maryland on february 11, the day before the maryland primaries. my mom, my sister and i were walking down the line of people, and i was amazed at how long it went. every time we turned a corner, there were more people standing there. the line had to be about 2 miles, literally. it snaked from the comcast, over the hill, past the parking garage, across the footbridge and past the rec center. the line probably went further than that, but luckily we saw someone we knew waiting in line. she told us that the police officer told her she was at the halfway point. we stood with her for about 10 minutes, then we were able to return the favor by bringing her into the arena early when the officers let us bypass the line and go in a side door because our party had kids in it. we got pretty good seats where we could actually see his face. we waited in the arena for about 3 hours before obama actually came to speak. while we were waiting, about 2 hours before his speech, "cheerleaders" kept chanting and trying to get people to cheer. all fired up! ready to go! (it gets very annoying after a while). i think that obama's a good speaker and the speech was really inspiring. it was a great experience seeing him live and hearing him speak. i really like when he said "things now aren't how they have to be. it's time to turn the page." i hope he wins the most delegates so he can run in the presidential election. i like his message in how he wants to change things. if i was 18, i'd vote for barack obama.

beatriz

ps. my best post this year!!