Winter!!!

Picture courtesy of Deseret News

Living in Park City means that we get a lot of snow. Not like a foot of snow, but like six or seven feet in a month. Getting snow here makes everyone happier because it means that it is the holiday season. A lot of people have their christmas lights up around my neighborhood and it has gotten really cold. It has gotten late enough in November that we are listening to christmas music and bundling up in our fur coats and soft scarves. I have to walk to the high school everyday for band and percussion so I have a pocket in my backpack that is just for my coat, hat, gloves, and scarf.

A lot of people have been asking me what I want for Christmas, and usually I have a list as long as S Santa's nice list but this year is somehow different. I don't know why but I just can't think of anything I want for christmas. I am going to be asking all of my aunts and uncles for money that I can put towards my Hawaii trip, but I don't know what to ask Santa for. Maybe some of my friends(im talking to you syscilia) can give me ideas I don't know. I also watch the commercials around christmas time because that is about half of my christmas wish list. 

Next week we only have Monday and Tuesday in school because it's thanksgiving break. We were supposed to go to school on Wednesday, but the teachers got an extra day off. I love helping my mom cook thanksgiving dinner. We always seem to either overcook or undercook the turkey a bit, but I think it turns out fine. I refuse to eat the stuffing though because it has like turkey liver and gizzard in it and thats really gross. My aunt bakes the best rolls you have ever tasted and brings them every year for like a special treat. My cousins come up every year so I get to hang out with them since I don't see them very much, and we spend Christmas with everyone as well. 

For Christmas, my little brother and I get up at like 7:45 and open presents. We would get up earlier but our parents made a rule that we couldn't wake them up before 7:45. After we open presents, we either head down to my uncle's house in Salt Lake City, or everyone comes up to my house and we have a christmas party for a while. Then the next day, we drive or fly to one of three locations. New Mexico, California, or we stay at our house and all of my dad's family comes here. We also have a tradition of getting our Christmas tree the weekend after thanksgiving. My dad gets frustrated because my mom like wraps the christmas lights around every branch to make it look perfect when he just wants to wrap it around the tree like a normal person. It takes us like the whole day because we can get like a 16' tree because we have a super tall ceiling. 

I hope all of you are having a great holiday season!! I'll post in a little while after Thanksgiving :)

My life right now

Literally me right now(my friend would be so proud of me for using that sentence)

Video Courtesy of Smilesumo.com

Ok so I know I haven't posted for a while, but I have been busy trying to put my costume together the day before halloween. To my relief, it was a success. I went as artemis, who is the greek goddess of the moon and the hunt, nature, and archery. Her animal is the stag and the hunting dog. She is also the virgin goddess. Her twin brother is Apollo, the god of light and the sun, truth and prophecy, healing, plague, music, and poetry. Her parents are Zeus, god of the sky, and Leto, who was shunned by everybody because Zeus's wife Hera got jealous. Anyways, I went as her and it was fun, but I brought my longbow that is real, and kept wacking people with it when we were trick or treating on Main Street.

Today I'm really just going to rant on about a couple of things that are going on in my life right now which includes some greek mythology so get ready for a history lesson. In english, we are starting to read the Odyssey for out hero unit which will last all of quarter two. I love these kinds of books because I love greek mythology. I find it very fascinating to learn about all of the different ways thousands of gods have helped mankind evolve over the centuries. Well we started on book 9 because the books aren't in chronological order, and we want to read it in chronological order, so the books we are reading wont be in chronological order, or something like that.

In this book, Odysseus is telling his story to a king of an island he crash-landed on you could say. He says that he travels with his ships to try to get home which should only take a month, but it takes them ten years. He explains how he came across the island of cyclopes' and he went to see this monster being or freak of nature which was what Odysseus called him. He described him as big and keeps to himself and his flock, which gave away to me at least that this cyclops was Polyphemus. Now this would have been obvious if you had read the Percy Jackson series. Well it turns out I didn't know how Polyphemus came to be blind from the Percy Jackson books. It turns out that Odysseus gouged his eye out with part of Polyphemus's own walking stick that he heated in the fire. It was really gory and I didn't enjoy that part very much. But with Polyphemus's dad being Poseidon, now Poseidon hates Odysseus.

Well in other news, quarter one just ended and since this is my first year in high school, it is very important that I do well this year. Of course I should do good every year, but this year is especially important for my future. I ended with a 3.713 GPA which isn't bad, but isn't as good as I was hoping for. I need to do better in my AP Geography class, which means not waiting until the night before a chapter test to actually read the chapter in our textbooks(thats me). 

Since Halloween is over, it is now officially christmas season. Now I'm not really in the Christmas mood yet, but I'm getting there. In both band and percussion, we are working on christmas tunes for the winter concert. In band we are playing bobsled run, twas' the night before christmas, and shalom, which I guess is a Chanukah song not a christmas song but you get the point. In percussion, we are doing a song called visions of sugar plums, which is really cool, but pretty difficult for the keyboard players. I got the part for chimes, which is the big metal instrument that I am barely tall enough to play. The only bad part was that the entire song was in bass clef and I only read treble clef being a flute player. After struggling for about an hour, Whitney and I switched parts since she could read bass clef and now I play the bass drum. I find it more enjoyable than struggling behind Skylar, who has been playing percussion since the 6th grade. Plus Portia kept giving me evil stares because I couldn't play a note to save my life.

Well that's my life in a nutshell. If you were expecting dirty secrets and high school drama you're in the wrong place. I am not going to spill all of my secrets to an electronic device where anyone in the world can read it.(I'm talking to you Russia people).