A sorta-kinda funny story

Hi! It's me again! I have a kind of funny story...

In english class today we were reading something out of the textbook, and then the next thing I knew, the teacher was shaking my arm. I sat up and was like, "What? Who? Where? Huh?" Then I remembered that I was in english and I had been sleeping (and everyone was staring at me). The teacher said, "You've been asleep, honey. It's time to go to math class now."
That's a picture of me at the top, drooling all over my textbook.

Has anything like that ever happened to you?

Hi again!

Ok, we have some new features! First, goldfish! Who doesn't love goldfish? Put your cursor in their "fishbowl" and they will swim around it. Also, I got a pet: Bandit, the bat! Click on the fly to release it and he will use ecolocation to find it and eat it. How fun is that? Last but not least, Super Mario Bros! I love that game. I have it for my Nintendo DS. For some reason, people think it's weird for a 7th grade girl to have a DS. Oh well. I don't care, you need to be yourself! Anyway, I know the screen is small, but have fun playing the game. More fun stuff will be coming shortly. Until then, you can read my old posts from when I was a ten-year-old. I was so weird back then. Alright, until next time! (Which will probably be like ten seconds from now.) I love blogging!

I'm Back!

Ok, so now that the whole Portugal adventure is over, I kind of stopped blogging for a while, but now I'm back! This blog is going to be a little different from now on, but if you like comics, polls, and stories written by tweenagers, then it's perfect for you! Anyway, hold on tight, it's gonna be a bumpy ride!

The End (sob)

Well, I’m back. After 10 months in Portugal, I’m back.

June 30: I woke up at six am. I was so excited, I couldn’t sleep any longer (though normally, I try to resist all attempts at waking me until at least nine). Walking down those red spiral stairs, I noticed the lack of stuff. I could have gone roller skating in our tiny house. I counted our last Portuguese coins as some of our neighbors helped us load up our gear. We were on our way to the airport.

I noticed the tiled roofs and cobblestone streets fly by and remembered watching the Lancaster farms zip past us as we drove to the airport in Philadelphia. When we got there, my mom wanted to spend all the euros we had left. I got a couple pretty good key chains out of that. That made us a little late. After much slipping on the waxed floors and silently begging the passport people to hurry up, we just made the plane, five minutes before take-off—no wait.

On the first plane, there was no screen on the back of the seat in front of me. I fell asleep, which was probably good, because I was about to get time warped. Well, sort of. I just added five hours to my day.

In London, we had four hours to board our next plane. Four hours never passed so fast. We almost missed that one, too. Imagine the sight from the perspective of the crew waiting for the Allen family at the gate:

On the big plane, I got a kid’s British Airways pack: magazine, socks, and some postcards. I immediately turned on the entertainment system in front of me. I watched Toy Story 2, tons of Cartoon Network cartoons, the Lightning Thief, and How to Train your Dragon. By the time the last movie was done, my ears hurt too much to think straight. Not sure whether that had anything to do with landing.

My grandparents met us at the airport. I was pretty happy to see them. Well, actually, I was ecstatic. Actually, I was happier than you could really write on a blog. I did guinea pig impressions all the way home. Then I can’t remember putting my head on the pillow. The next morning, I woke up at six again, thinking it was nine.

I’m very happy to see my friends, family, and mac ’n’ cheese again, but that doesn’t mean I don’t miss Portugal.

Poptropica, Lightning Thieves, and Ruins, All at Once!

Taking a detour from the Portuguese, or rather, going back before the Portuguese conquest of the peninsula, I would like to talk a bit about ancient Greeks and Romans. My life is currently sort of themed Mythology, mainly Greek.

Wandering the Ruins: As a follow-up to our exploration of the ruins at Milreu (see my blog on the Algarve), my dad and I visited a ruined village, Conímbriga, north of Lisbon, close to the medieval city of Coimbra. It was really cool. There was an old villa that had a restored fountain and you could drop a coin in the slot to see it play. Unfortunately, someone had vandalized the coin machine. Perhaps a monster sent by Hades? We hiked all over the old village and saw the remnants of shops, courtyard pillars, and many mosaics. My favorite were the baths. They had lots of little brick arches underneath, through which the water flowed. There was also a wall which the villagers had hurriedly thrown up against invaders, just before the town was abandoned. Who were the invaders? I was hoping to find out, but I guess the people who run the ruins & archeological museum don’t know either.

Reading the Book: The Lightning Thief. It’s about a boy named Percy who finds out he’s the son of Poseidon, so he goes to this camp for kids who are half human, half god. Halfbloods. Then he has to go on a quest to bring the master lightning bolt back to Zeus and clear his dad’s name. Zeus accuses Poseidon. Everybody except Zeus says it’s in the Underworld and Hades took it; but did he really? If Poseidon didn’t take it, like Zeus says, and Hades didn’t take it like the staff at Camp Halfblood says, who did? It’s great; a real page turner. My favorite mythological creature: Cerby (Cerberus), who likes to play with red rubber balls (though they don’t last long).

Playing the Game: Ever heard of Poptropica? It’s a website where you can create a character and then try to beat islands by mastering different games with themes, for instance, Reality TV Island or Shark Tooth Island. I recently went on the site, to find a Mythology Island! You have to collect some sacred items for Zeus, or all of Poptropica will face his wrath. If you beat the island, you become immortal. Not you. Your character, I mean. Though, do I want to be immortal? It seems like the gods have a lot of problems. Take Zeus, he can’t even keep track of his thunderbolt... Losing track of your thunderbolt might be even worse than losing track of your transportation pass (though I don’t know, having faced the wrath of my dad when I leave that behind...).

Battleship

My dad homeschooled me this year, which allowed for some creativity in my work. For this answer, the question was, Write a story problem that includes charting data on a graph.

Battleship

Belated Blogs: Math, Myths, Moving

Well, I'm finally home, but you will hear of that soon enough. Right now, I have some really really really really really really overdue mythological and mathematical blogs I need to post. Just so you know, in this picture I am listening to fado with a lolly pop (or a chupa-chup) in my mouth.