I'm leaving for China tomorrow morning. We have to wake up at about 4:15 AM and take the first train to the airport, which is at 5:02 AM. Everyone is just doing last minute packing. I hope that we will have a very enjoyable trip. I will tell you everything after I come back!
Hangzhou is a city with a lot of tourist attraction. There is even a saying, “In heaven there is paradise, on earth Suzhou and Hangzhou.” Hangzhou is my family’s third destination while we are in China. We will stay in Hangzhou for a total of ten days. We are going to see many things in Hangzhou, the place where my mother grew up. One of those things is visiting my grandparents (on my mother’s side). My grandparents have been to Boston before when I was in fifth grade and stayed for about half a year. My family is also going to see West Lake, the most famous lake in China. Most of the sights along the shore of West Lake have to do with famous people. There are gardens, bridges, and little huts all around the lake. There is also a small island in the middle of the lake called Xiaoying Island. There are boats from different places around the lake that will take people to the island. There is also a very big island near the northern part of the lake where there is a bridge to drive to the island. There is also a long strip of bridges connecting to the other side of the island called the Baidi Causeway. There is also the Sudi Causeway, which spans from one side of the lake to the other. The cause ways on the West Lake are consisted of bridges connecting long and narrow strips of land. Of the causeways, about 80% of them are narrow strips of land and 20% of them are bridges connecting the narrow strips. My family will also visit many of my mom’s friends who she used to go to school with. I hope that my family will have a lot of fun in Hangzhou.
While my family is visiting China, we will be going to Guilin, a southern city in China. We will be staying in Guilin for eight days. Guilin is famous for its scenery. One place that we will be going to in Guilin is Solitary Beauty Peak. It is a very high pinnacle (152 meters above sea level) and the climb to the top is very steep, but the climb should be worth it. There are amazing views of the city, the Li River, and the surrounding hills. At the foot of the peak, you can see the Wang Cheng, a huge mansion. My family is also going to see the Wave-Subduing Hill. The hill is very close to the Solitary Beauty Park. The hill also gives a great view of the city. Another place my family is going to visit is Seven Star Park. There are several caves in the park. There are stalactites and stalagmites inside too. I can’t wit to see those. Each of the stalactites and stalagmites are named based on what can be seen “in” them when enough concentration and imagination is used. Some of the names are, “Monkey Picking Peaches,” “Two Dragons Playing Ball,” and “Melon and Fruits Woven into Satin.” It costs about $2.50 to enter the park and $3.75 to see the caves. My family is also going to the Reed Flute Cave. The cave is 240 meters underground. There are also many stalactites and stalagmites inside. Entry to the cave is $5.00. The Li River connects Guilin and Yangshuo. My family is going to take a boat down the river to see Yangshuo. Along the river, you can see peaks in the distance, bamboo lining the river banks, fishermen in boats, and some small villages. There is a tour guide that will talk about all the things we will pass on the river. After the boat trip, we will take a bus from Yangshuo back to Guilin. That is what my family will be doing on our trip to Guilin.
In August, I will be taking a trip to China. I have never been to China before, so this will be my first time ever. I will be going with my mom, dad, and my younger brother. We will be going to three cities: Shanghai, Guilin, and Hangzhou. We will leave on Monday, August 14, 2006. Since there is no direct flight from Boston to Shanghai, we will have to take a plane to Chicago, and then take another plane to China. We are taking American Airlines to and from China. The plane leaves Logan Airport at 8:00 AM and lands in Chicago at about 10:00 AM (assuming that there are no delays or cancellations). The plane does not serve breakfast. After flying to Chicago, we leave for China at 11:00 AM (Central Standard Time) and arrive in China about 3:00 PM (local time in Shanghai). In Shanghai, it is 12 hours ahead of the US EST (Eastern Standard Time). So if we land in China at 3:00 PM, it would be 3:00 AM in the US EST. That means that the flight should last about 15 hours. The flight will serve lunch. Once we arrive in Shanghai, it will already be August 15, a day after the day when we departed from Boston. My family will stay in Shanghai for three days. On the afternoon of August 18, we will depart for Guilin, our second destination. It takes about three hours to fly from Shanghai to Guilin. Guilin is about 1000 miles southwest from Shanghai. We will stay in Guilin for eight days. On August 26, my family will leave for Hangzhou, which is about 800 miles northeast of Guilin. The flight should take about 2.5 hours. Hangzhou is fairly close to Shanghai. We will stay in Hangzhou for ten days. On September 5, 2006, we will leave Hangzhou and fly back to Chicago and back to Boston. According to the time zone, the trip will really only last about five hours, even though it will feel like 15 hours. My brother and I will be playing plenty of cards, for it is a very long plane trip. We have already decided all the games we will be playing. Because of the time change, it will be hard to get used to sleeping. I will be really tired when it is light out and I will probably wake up a lot during the night when it is dark out. I also only have a few days before school begins again. I have to do a lot of things to get ready for it. I hope my trip will be really enjoyable!
Rubric’s Cube is a small 3-by-3-by-3 cube with colors on each face. It is an interesting puzzle. There are six colors, one for each face: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and white. You can turn the parts of the cube in any direction. One of my relatives who live in Canada sent it to me. It came with the instructions on how to complete the puzzle. Rubric’s Cube is supposed to be really hard for those who don’t know how to do it. I can only complete it with the instructions by my side. However, I can complete the first half myself, because it is mostly simple logic that can be reasoned easily. I have even timed myself. My fastest time in completing Rubric’s Cube is 6 minutes and 14 seconds. Even with the instructions, it is not as easy as it sounds. It is still mostly all your logic and the instructions just tell you what to do when you figure out your logic. That sentence is a little confusing. You have to try it out to understand what I’m saying. One of the main reasons why I thing Rubric’s Cube it fun is because it involves math. For those who know me, they know that I like math. Ever since, Rubric’s Cube started becoming a fad, there have been easier and more difficult versions of it. There is a 2-by-2-by-2 version which should be very simple. There is also a 4-by-4-by-4 version which is much harder. I really want that one! The hardest one is a 5-by-5-by-5, I don't think I really want to try that one!
It is amazing how 52 sheets of laminated paper with numbers, letters, and symbols can be so fun and enjoyable. There are so many games you can play with cards. They are a good way to relax and have fun. I have many favorite card games. I usually like card games that have skill involved, not pure luck. For example, War is a horrible and boring card game. Some of my favorite card games are President, Big 2, Spades, and some others. President and Big 2 are very similar to each other. Cards are a good way to pass the time. They’re useful on the airplane, especially during long flights. Cards are most enjoyable when played with other people. However, there are card games that can be played with only one person, such as solitaire. There are many different types of solitaire: Clock Solitaire, One-Handed Solitaire, Pyramid Solitaire, etc. Not only are cards fun, they are also small and easy to carry around. They are also very cheap; about three dollars a pack. Cards are a really good way to have fun!
My younger brother, Alex, is eight years old. He is going to be in third grade when school starts. Alex can be a good brother, but sometimes, he is really annoying. My brother likes to do most things that I do that aren’t too difficult for him. One of things he like to do is playing the piano. My brother started the piano in second grade. He isn’t as good as I was when I was his age though. He doesn’t practice that much since it is summertime, but he is going to have to practice soon because school is starting again soon and that means that he is going to resume his piano lessons. My brother likes riding bikes. He usually rides with me because it is more fun riding with another person than riding alone. My brother is allergic to many things: peanuts, fish, kiwi, egg, and maybe some other things he has never tried before. He also has eczema. Eczema is a skin irritation. Eczema looks like a rash and appears when my brother itches a lot. It goes away once he doesn’t itch it. Sometimes, his eczema is on the verge of going away, and then he itches again and it comes back. He usually itches on hot days and at times when he’s sweating, so summer is not a good season for him.
For the first month of summer, July, I went to a camp called Asian Students Center (ASC). At ASC, kids learn math and English (and history for some classes) for the first three hours. Then, the half-days (the kids who only attend for half a day) can leave and the full-days (the kids who stay the whole day) stay for the afternoon activities. In the previous years that I went to ASC, I was a full-day student. This year, I was a half-day. ASC starts at 9 o’clock. The first subject is math. Math class is easy compared to the English class. We always start out with an opener. It is a short problem that should only take a couple of minutes. It is supposed to get the class ready to do math. Every Friday, there is a short quiz on the subjects learned that week. The quizzes were usually only had a couple of questions. There was also supposed to be five pop quizzes, except the teacher kept hinting that there would be a quiz the following day, so the quizzes were not very unexpected. The teacher also gave challenge problems, where the first person that solved the problem could either get a free-homework pass or a 100% quiz added to the person’s quiz grade. In math class, we learned things like linear equations, graphing equations, slope, finding the equation of a line, the point-slope formula, and many other things. English class was the second half. In English class, there were quizzes every Friday. The English quizzes were considerably longer than the math quizzes. The only good part about the English quizzes was that the class was allowed to redo the questions that were incorrect and hand them back in for three-fourth of a point for each corrected answer. There were also no pop quizzes in English. However, everyone had to write an essay each week. We had to write about a good place to relax and unwind, a personal narrative, and a persuasive essay. That was probably the worst part of ASC, weekly essay-writing. After English ended, I would leave (because I was only a half-day) ands walk over to my dad’s workplace, which is only about a mile away. I would eat lunch there and do all my homework assigned from ASC. I only went to ASC for the first month because in the second month, August, I would be going on vacation.
Chopin is a very famous composer. He has written several ballades, nocturnes, etc. One of his most famous pieces is “Fantaisie Impromptu” (a.k.a. “Fantasy Imprompt”). My piano teacher assigned this piece to me. Every time I get a new piece, I always scan the whole piece to get a sense of what the music is like. This way, I know how difficult the piece of music is, where the difficult parts are, where the slow and fast parts are, what the tonality is, etc. Here were my first thoughts when I scanned this piece:
“Woah, the first note is a whole note (four beats); a very dramatic beginning.”
“The left hand isn’t that hard because there is a lot of repeating included.”
“The right hand will need some practice.”
“Oh my gosh, the right hand plays eight notes while the left hand plays six! I’ll never get that right!”
“That’s a long descending chromatic scale.”
“Good, there is a slow part in the middle of this piece. That part will be a cinch.”
“There is a lot of repeating after the slow part.”
“The ending is really hard, I don’t even I understand it.”
“The last two chords are really beautiful.”
Well, it turns out that the most difficult part of this piece was not to put the right hand with the left hand as aforementioned. It took about a week to figure out how to do it. Now, my hands just play it that way naturally. Go figure! So far, I’ve played this piece for about a month. Amazingly, I’ve already played eight out the nine pages in this piece. The first half of the last page looks really difficult to me. It might even take me another month to complete it! So far, I have progressed a lot faster than I thought I would. I hope I will finish the piece soon!
Here is the sheet music of the peice, Fantaisie Impromptu, if you are interested.
You can listen to the piece, Fantaisie Impromptu, by clicking here. To tell you the truth, the musician who plays this isn't much better than me, but it was the best I can find that was free.
I’ve recently finished a book entitled, “Leon and the Champion Chip,” the sequel to “Leon and the Spitting Image.” This book was also written by Allen Kurtzweil. This book is about how Leon enters a chip competition and he has to know facts about chips and recognize brands of chips by seeing, smelling, and tasting the chip. In the chip competition, Leon has to compete against two strong opponents who have both won in the previous years of the competition. Leon is entering this competition to earn the $1000 first place reward to buy a $159 jacket. In addition to the chip competition, there is a cool science teacher that has planned the whole school year on the topic, chips, a big bully named Lumpkin who causes a lot of trouble, a spitting image that creates a lot of fun, a Science Fair to prove the science teacher is a good teacher, a taxi driver named Napoleon who gives Leon free rides from his house to his school, a chip collection which includes chips that have never been heard of, and much more! This is a really exciting book that you can’t put down once you start. The most exciting part of this book is when the final three competitors compete against each other. I was so eager to see who was going to win. Allen Kurtzweil is a good author, however, he has only written two children’s books (the two Leon series books) and a numerous number of adult books. The adult books don’t seem as good as the children’s books to me, but maybe that just me.
I have many different hobbies. One of them is playing the piano. I have been playing the piano for six years. I had originally started playing an instrument for two reasons. The first reason is that a teacher of mine had said that I had a good sense of beat and rhythm. Another reason is that my mother wanted me to learn the notes in music because they would be helpful in the future. I decided to play the piano because it was the most popular instrument played. When I first went to my lessons, I caught on very quickly. I had learned all the basic notes when the other students in my group didn’t. I could master short pieces in a week when others had to use two weeks (unless I didn’t practice very much that week). After a year of playing the keyboard with a group, I was ready to move on. At the start of the new semester, I was introduced to a new piano teacher, Ms. Josaki. I have now played with her for five years. I have progressed a lot from when I first started playing—from Hot Cross Buns to Bach’s Minuet to Chopin’s Fantasie Impromptu. I have even been to a competition and won an Honorable Mention award. Playing the piano is really fun, especially once I get better at it. The only bad part about playing the piano is practicing. Every school day, I practice about one hour. That way, I have enough time to finish homework, work on projects, and many other things. In the summer and on some weekends, I practice for about two hours since there is more time. I hope that someday, I will have progressed so far that I will amaze myself.
During the school year, my friend Daniel recommended a book to me. It was called, “Leon and the Spitting Image.” This book is about a boy, Leon, who is very bad at doing things with his fingers. He is in the fourth grade and he cannot even tie his own shoelaces. In the beginning of the school year, he meets his new teacher, Mrs. Hagmeyer (the children call her “The Hag”). Mrs. Hagmeyer is not a normal teacher. She doesn’t teach math, science, and English. All she teaches is sewing. Unfortunately for Leon, he have never had success in any activity where the precision of the fingers is included. Naturally, he is horrible at it and according to Mrs. Hagmeyer, he has 2 s.p.i. (stitches per inch), the worst in the class. The average fourth grader can do 4 s.p.i. Soon, the principal is talking about keeping Leon back for a year, meaning that he might have to redo fourth grade. That is when the principal makes the best suggestion ever: “Leon, you should get some more sleep.” Before, Leon had always not gotten much sleep due to an old, broken-down ice machine that was always clicking and groaning and making noises. He asked some people to fix it so he could finally get some sleep. Each day, he was getting more and more sleep. All the extra rest paid off though. He was getting better and better at sewing. Soon he could do 6 s.p.i., above the fourth grade average. In the end of the year, Mrs. Hagmeyer wanted the class to create their own animile (what the teacher calls an “animal”). Leon makes his animile a model of Mrs. Hagmeyer. He works really hard on it and then brings it to school. He unintentionally gets spit on his animile. Leon then realizes that he had just created a spitting image, something that lets the owner control the person that it represents; in this case, Mrs. Hagmeyer. Since Leon could control the Hag, he make her do all sort of cool and embarrassing things. The best part of this book is when Leon presents his project and Mrs. Hagmeyer sayd that Leon had achieved 11 s.p.i. Then, Leon said that Mrs. Hagmeyer could keep his animile so she hugged him!
Hi, welcome to by blog! This is my first post on my blog. I started this blog because of two reasons. One, I thought that a blog would be a good way to express my ideas. Two, it is good writing practice. I'm going to try to make a couple of entries each week. Please feel free to give me comments. Critizism is okay, as long as there is a good reason for it. Thanks for visiting my blog!
