June 24 in Morocco

Morocco is very different from the US. I knew this, but being there shows me how different it is. There is trash everywhere. There are very poor people on the street. People try to sell you things all the time. Fortunately, our hotel was airy, quiet, and peaceful. I woke up in our hotel yesterday at about 8:00. I got dressed, and went downstairs where Baba was eating and chatting with some other hotel guests. I ate a few mini croissants, and drank some orange juice. Our plan for yesterday was to meet up with a tour guide at 9:00 and get a tour of Tangier. Our guide, an older man named Mohamed, arrived and we set off. It was lightly raining and a little bit chilly, despite it being summer and us being so close to the equator. We walked to a nearby bus, and were driven all over the city, with Mohamed telling us all about wherever we were. He seemed like a knowledgeable guy. After this we departed and started to walk on foot. We saw all sorts of different markets, from jewelry to fish. The fish and meat markets were particularly good for taking photos in. Here are some photos:  

We saw a whole bunch of things (and Baba even bought some rugs) on the tour, which lasted until about 3:00. We had to get a taxi to drive us back to the hotel. For the rest of the afternoon we relaxed, me reading the book that I'm currently enjoying. We had dinner on the roof o the hotel. I ate little more than the vegetable soup. We continued to relax and read, then sent to sleep.

June 25 in Morocco and Spain

Yesterday was relaxed at the beginning and end and had travel in the middle. We woke up at our hotel in Tanger; Baba went downstairs to eat. I followed a few minutes later. Our bellies more full, we walked to the nearby moroccan history museum. There were a whole bunch of cool exhibits, including an old world map and a room with walls and a ceiling made from colorful tiles.  There was a garden in the back in which we saw a turtle. Our travel book said that there were snake charmers in Tanger, we could not find one, so we went back to the hotel to inquire about where we could see one. We learned that we had walked right by him, so we went down there and i has my picture taken with a snake. Soon after that we packed up and were brought to the airport. We arrived, checked in, boarded, flew, deplaned, and took a taxi to our hotel in Madrid. We ate dinner with the husband if one of my mom's friends. Because the restrung used to be a soup factory, one of the desserts was "soap". Here it is:

The foam was very lemony, and the "soup bar" was made of white chocolate. The whole thing was weird. We got back and we were very tired, so we went to sleep.

June 23 in Spain & Morocco

Yesterday I slept in until 9:00, knowing that we had nothing to do until we were picked up at 11:00. When I got up, we went downstairs to eat breakfast, that time at the hotel. I had the same meal as I had had the day before, but that time Baba managed to find me hot chocolate. This improved the meal. Afterwords, we packed. My bag was swollen from the amount of stuff squeezed into it. We took a cab to the ferry port, and we managed to board the ferry. Baba had us sit next to another boy a little younger than me and his relative ( I'm not sure how that guy was related to him). I mostly read on the trip. Half way through we saw the Rock of Gibraltar:

When we arrived in Morocco, we took a shuttle bus to another bus station. When our rude did not come, Baba had a series if over the phone conversations with various people in which only half the words were understandable. We ended up having to take a taxi to our hotel. From the taxi we could see a good amount of Moroccan countryside:

We rested at our hotel until dinner, when we set to dinner. Along the way a man tried to "help us" to find dinner and guide us. Baba ended up talking to him, and he proceeded to lead us to a Moroccan style restaurant. The food was okay, but I was busy worrying about how safe the water and fresh vegetables were, as well as being uncomfortable around this "guide" who was following us around. After dinner we walked back to the hotel. Baba ended up having to pay the man, but not much. Tired again, we went to sleep.

Someone was selling these chicks, who were squeaking and running around in the box.

June 22 in Spain

Yesterday we left Malaga on a day-long trip to Cordoba. My meal at the hotel probably my least favorite so far, mostly due to the lack of hot chocolate. The croissants were also suboptimal. We left our hotel at about 8:00 am to catch the 9:00 train. We passed through the fairly lax security, then waited for the train to leave the station. I was very tired, and napped for most of the ride. When we arrived, I waited impatiently while Baba chatted with a stranger for the zillionth time.  When we finally got in the bus, we quickly got off, near the famous La Mozquita. Turns out it was closed until the afternoon, so we when to the other tourist attraction, the synagogue. That was closed for restoration. Right next to the synagogue, there was a museum about the history of Spanish Jews, which we went into.

The synagogue!!!

We ate lunch at a local tapas restaurant; the food was mediocre. After lunch we walked back to La Mozquita, and were met with a very long line. Baba was determined to go in, though, so we got on the end. When we did get inside, the wait was worth it. Apparently there are one thousand columns, with arches connecting them all. Due to that it was originally a mosque and then a cathedral, there was a strange mix of the two cultures inside the building. Here are some photos:

After the mosque, we had nothing more to do, so we took an early train back to Malaga. At the hotel I read my book for a while; then we set off for dinner. Our dinner was also a tapas bar, and like usual Baba had to talk to every single person she saw. My tapas were good but not great, but I think this was my fault for not order food I would have liked the most. After dinner  we had flan, then went back to the hotel and went to sleep.

June 21 in Spain

(Sorry this one is late. I had wifi problems)

Yesterday I got to sleep in! We had been waking up fairly early the previous days, and I slept way in, until about 9:30, which is way late for me. Once I finally got up, we went to our favorite local breakfast place; the Bar del Pi. We had our breakfasts, then due to that we had nothing scheduled for that day other than a mid-afternoon flight to Malaga, we walked to the remains of the oldest known synagog in Europe, which happened to be nearby. It was very small, and for ten minutes a staff member explained the history of the place to us. As we were leaving, I realized that I no longer had my bag. We rushed  back to our breakfast restaurant and to my relief the bag was waiting there for us. From there we went to the local cathedral. We walked around, then entered a room that was open to the sky and contained trees and geese. They honked at us for a little bit, then we left. Our final stop for the day before returning to our hotel was another Gaudi house. We walked around it and listened to the audio guide; moving faster than it was and therefore skipping large parts of the tour. Here are some pictures I took of the interior and exterior of the house:

We exited the house and went back to the hotel. We waited a little while, then were picked up by a cab and transported to the airport. At the airport, our tickets turned out to be standby, but we were lucky enough to get seats in the flight. I read on the flight. When we arrived in Malaga, we took a cab to the hotel, checked in, then went out to dinner. The food was okay, but not great. By the time we got back I was exhausted, and read a little before going to sleep.

I thought these mountains were impressive:

 

June 20 in Spain

 Yesterday we left Barcelona for the day. Like we have been, we woke up at 7:00 and got our usual breakfast, this time at a little restaurant nearby. The croissant was my least favorite of all the ones I ate while in Barcelona, and the hot chocolate was delicious and pretty much like all the other hot chocolate everywhere else. After a while our bus arrived, and be got on. the tour guide talked the entire time, which i found especially irritating due to that I had an amazing book and was really trying to read. When we arrived, I walked out into a small Spanish village. We went on a tour around that lasted about two hours, but due to my insomnia the night before, I was exhausted and spent the tour finding places to sit. Here are some pictures I took:

After that drudgery, we are lunch at a fairly standard restaurant. I had octopus. Around 1:00 pm, we boarded the bus again and went to the Dali museum. According to our previously mention guide, all of the good art was in Miami, and we most thought the museum was not that interesting, so we left sooner than everyone else and sat at a cafe for a while. Some more photos:

A Dali painting /|\

                        |

The Pyrenees in the distance /|\

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June 19 in Spain

Yesterday we hopped on and off the hop-on-hop-off bus. Unfortunately, we had to wake up earlier than I wanted to, which at least gave me insight into how great  sleeping is. Anyway, like every morning so far, we found a cafe and ate our usual breakfasts. I had a chocolate croissant and a cup of hot chocolate. Baba had a coffee. My croissant was subpar compared to the others I've had in the past few days, and the hot chocolate fulfilled its job of being both hot and chocolaty. We waited around for a few more minutes, then boarded the bus.

The first of the three stops was Park Guell, a public park designed by Gaudi. We purchased a new pair of sunglasses for me to replace the ones I'd lost (sorry Mom!). Recently, they changed the park to make the tile lizard in a place you have to pay to get into, and we could see the lizard from afar, so we decided to just leave the park and return to the bus.

The second and by far the most interesting stop was the Barcelona science museum. Due to a severe lack of signs, we wandered around for a almost a half an hour, attempting to find the museum. Once we arrived, the museum was fairly good, right until the end (when it became great!). First off we walked down a giant spiraling ramp around the above tree. Then we walked through an exhibit on the on the nearby Mediterranean Sea. That exhibit was not the most enjoyable. From there we walked into the main museum, with many physics-related exhibits, all of which were interactive. The level of interactivity made the museum really fun. But at the end, they had an amazon-like forest with ponds containing very large fish of all sorts, various tall trees, and this, a capybara:

 

Here's what it looked like:

Our final stop was Mont Juic, a nearby hill that took a funicular ride to reach. Baba did not want to go, so I went up, took some pictures, and went down. Here's one of the pictures:

June 18 in Spain

I woke up to an alarm at 7:00 yesterday. Grumbling, I got out of bed and got dressed so Baba and I could make our bus. Still tired, we went to look for a place to get breakfast. Although it was past 8:00, the majority of the shops are closed. When we found a cafe, I ordered a chocolate croissant and a hot chocolate. Instead I got two chocolates, and drank them both. Baba and I greatly enjoyed our breakfast, then walked to where our tour bus would be picking us up. The bus took us on a Gaudi tour, stopping twice, at the places displayed in the pictures below. 

This was the first building we stopped at. Unfortunately, I managed to not get an pictures of the exterior o the house, and this shot of a window is the best I have. Anyway, the exterior and interior of this building was entirely made out if curves, making it feel a hobbit hole.

This is the front of the Sagrada Familia, the giant church that Gaudi spent his entire life working on and is still under construction. This side represents the nativity scene from the bible. Below you can see baby Jesus on the central pillar. 

Above is the interior of the cathedral. The columns represent trees. One interesting fact I learned is that Gaudi kept most of the religious sculptures and whatnot on the outside of the Sagrada Familia in order to make everyone comfortable inside.

And finally, the back. This side repersent Jesus's death. It's still under construction, but you can see Jesus crusified and various other people mourning.

After the tour, I relaxed at the hotel until dinner. At dinner I ordered a delectable octopus dish, and for dessert we had flan again. This flan was also minuscule. Maybe my flan size expectations are inflated...

June 17 in Spain

PToday was my first day in Spain with Baba, my grandmother. After about 10 hours of travel, we arrived at our hotel in Barcelona. I had slept uncomfortably and for a small amount of time on the plane, and was exhausted and fell asleep within minutes of entering our room.

After a five hour nap, I awoke in a much less tired. Baba and I walked to a nearby market and guessed the meaning of the Catalan signs around the market. There were some unusual items for sale, as you can see in the pictures above. As well as the meat in the above pictures, there were vendors that sold a variety of different eggs ranging in size from quail eggs to ostrich eggs and a vendor selling many varieties of fish. We ordered rabbit, snails, and mushrooms for dinner, but none of it was amazing. Baba and I split the tiniest flan ever, but enjoyed it none the less. Do to the lack of size on the flan's part, on the way back to our hotel we got a little bit if ice cream. They had the strangest flavor I have ever seen:

~max

Quick Spain & Morocco Iterniary

June 16:

Leave Boston at 5:30

June 17:

Get into the Barcelona hotel at 11:00 am

June 18:

Gaudi tour around Barcelona

June 19:

Hop on hop off buss tour around Barcelona

June 20:

More sightseeing around Barcelona

June 21:

Get to Cordoba

June 22:

Hop on hop off buss tour around Cordoba

June 23:

Get to Tanger

June 24:

Tanger tour

June 25:

Get to and explore Madrid

June 26:

Explore Madrid and then leave.

One of the Activities I Did Over April Break

     So, I'm nearing the end of my April break, and I've decided to blog on one of the things I did over my fairly relaxed break.  Not once, but twice I went to the New England Aquarium with my friend Rory. The first time, we took the subway into Boston and walked to the Aquarium. To our dismay, the aquarium has a (somewhat bad) policy of not letting people under 18 into the aquarium with an adult. So we wandered around Boston and got lunch before heading home. A few days after that, we attempted again, this time with Rory's father walking us in and then leaving. We walked into his dad office and waited a few minutes while he accomplished things. As we were leaving, we were offered cake by one of the employees there. Even though we were headed of to get lunch, Rory and I consented and happily ate our cake. I was happy to eat cake.
From there we proceeded to a cafe across the street (where I had some delicious chowdah), and to the aquarium. We got our hands stamped, entered, and Rory's father left. First, we watched the penguins for a little bit. I took a whole bunch of photos, like the one above. I find it odd how how our attention was held by these little birds standing on rocks, not doing anything particularly interesting. After that, we went on to look at the smaller exhibits, like jellyfish and and other sea creatures. The tank was illuminated from below, lighting up the jellyfish in a neat way as they drifted around aimlessly. We then proceeded to the center of the aquarium and walked up and around the new central tank, watching the fish of very different shapes and colors swim around. Feeling a little hungry again, we walked into the aquarium cafe and got a snack, then reentered through the gift shop (proving that we could have gotten in on our first visit). Rory wanted to go to seal and sea lion training session, so walked over to the seal pool and watched as the seals waved at and high-five people. Both of us found this less interesting then we had hoped it would be. Rory had to leave, so we took the subway back. Both Rory and I had a good time at the aquarium.

Camera Class over the Weekend

     Yesterday, my mom and I went into Boston to attend a DSLR camera class. My mom really likes to take photos of things, and I went as extra memory to remember what the teacher said. The class started at 9:00 am and went until noon. We learned about the "exposure triangle", the three settings on cameras that can help you take good photos. These are the aperture, the ISO, and the shutter speed. Aperture is how much light the camera is letting in to the lens. This changes how much of the image is in focus, or the depth of field. The ISO is how sensitive the camera's light sensor is. This can help get good shots in low light, but the higher the ISO the greater the noise/fuzz in the image's background. The shutter speed, the final piece, is how fast the camera waits for light. A shorter shutter speed can get capture frozen action, while a longer one can get blurred motion shots. Also, the higher the shutter speed the darker the picture will be. I learned in this class that these three factors, when used in the right way, can produce exactly the picture that the photographer wants.

My Long Composition for MCAS 2014

    I have finished with the long comp essay that is part of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System. I did not write the essay in connection with the school system. The prompt for this year is "There are times when someone sacrifices or gives up something important for a good reason. Describe a time when you decided to give something up for a good reason. Explain what happened, why you made your decision, and how you felt afterwords." I am not totally happy with my essay because I feel like I am twisting the prompt. Anyway, here it is:

Two years ago, I was unhappy. I was enrolled in the local Public School System, and hated going to school every day. I had had friends in my class, but every single one of them had left, either for a different school or for a different class. They had been my only academic peers as well. I was without friends and not being challenged. Also, it was my teacher’s first year teaching, and she was assigned to a class (mine) in the second year of a class loop. This meant that all of the kids, having been together previously, knew each other from the previous year.Unfortunately, much of the class had very little respect for our new teacher. So my parents, knowing that I went into a class everyday, where the teacher could not control the students and I was learning very little, took me out of school.

Legally, I was homeschooled. What “homeschooled” meant was that I went every day to a school-like facility that the staff there called CSCL. At CSCL, or the Center for Semi-Conducted Learning, I could do whatever I wanted. It was run by 5 adults in their late twenties, and there were about fifteen students enrolled. The “teachers” taught a few classes every day, and you could go to them or not. At CSCL, I could learn whatever I wanted as fast as I wanted to whatever extent I wanted. Over the course of my time there, I learned computer programming, a good amount of math, and wrote a bunch at home. Even though I really liked CSCL, last summer I made the decision to give up this experience and went back to the public school for seventh grade.

This decision was not made quickly or easily. When my parents suggested that I go back to the public school, I was unsure. I had been much more happy at CSCL than I had been at the public school, and did not want that to change. After some thought, I decided that seventh grade would likely be very different from sixth. One of the reasons for this decision was that I would be in a class with different kids and would not be stuck all day with a teacher I didn’t like. Also, I felt that middle school was an important experience too, one that I didn’t want to miss. Moving around between classes and having more than one teacher would help to prepare me for high school. The worst case scenario, I thought, was that I didn’t like the public school and could just go back to CSCL. So, by the time school started up again, I was signed back up for the public school.

Before and after school started, I had missed feelings. Before the first day, I was unsure that I had made the right choice, but also excited about this new experience. I was unhappy that I would not see my friends from CSCL as much, and I would have less freedom to pursue and learn about whatever I wanted then I had had the previous year. But my lack of experience with middle school made me interested and curious about this new experience and how it would be. Once school had started, I was pretty content. I made new friends, liked most of my teachers, but was not quite as happy as I had been at CSCL. Even so, I was sure that middle school was an important experience to have had and that this decision was a good one.

In sixth grade, I was not happy at all, nor was I learning. The shift to CSCL let me learn whatever I wanted as fast as I wanted, but it also gave me more chances to do nothing, and less chances to interact with people that are less like me. When I went back to the public school for seventh grade, I made new friends, learned more than I did at the public school in sixth grade, and was sufficiently happy. From this experience, I learned something important; that giving something good up can result in something else good.

3/25/14 Biology

Yesterday in biology class we analyzed the data that we got from the lab two weeks ago. We made some graphs and talked about what they meant. I didn't really learn anything.

MIT Spark Program

  Two weekends ago, I went to MIT for their Spark program. Spark is a series of classes taught over the weekend for middle school students. The classes cover all sorts of topics, form cupcake-making to computer programming. Most of the classes were well-taught and interesting, but none of them inspired me in any way. Here are the classes I took, along with any comments I had about them.

• Saturday:
• The Physics, Chemistry, and Biology of Food
• This class was okay. The teacher wandered of topic for 60% of the class, but the parts where I got to learn what the class was supposed to be about were compelling.
• Math, Games, and Puzzles
• This class was pretty good. The teacher talked about the prisoner's dilemma and how the most rational decision can be the wrong one. I enjoyed this class.
• #winning
• This class was not as good as I expected it to be, but it was still fun. The teacher had us play and think about one game, which I forget the name of. I had hoped it would have been more about analyzation of many things rather than just this one game.
• Sunday:
• Gender and Health
• This class talked about how the different genders of people are more likely to get different ailments.
• Circuits in Cells? An Intro to Synthetic Biology
• This was probably my least favorite class. The teacher was not really prepared, she talked too quietly and too fast, and she assumed that the class knew things the at least some of us (me included) didn't.
• Lunch
• The food was good. I had a burrito, a water, and a cookie.
• Dynamic Programming
• This class was the most challenging and thought-provoking. The teacher talked about how to create algorithms that worked for all sorts of related situations.
• The Psychology of Shopping
• This class was amusing. I learned about phycology traps that companies use, like getting you to buy a $30 cell phone case, and how to not be fooled. We didn't get as far as the teacher wanted to, though, because she asked for question a lot.

3/18/14 Modeling the World

     Yesterday, I opted for the modelling the world class using programming. In class, we started to create a simulation of Conway's game of life. The class used Scratch.

3/18/14 Kitchen Science

     During yesterday’s kitchen science class, we made devilled eggs (or as I like to call them, demonic eggs). Oddly enough, only two people attended, unlike the eight or so that were there for the cookie-making last week. I would have thought that people liked eggs for the cookies. Anyway, we made the mayo out of oil, egg yolk, vinegar, mustard, lemon, and other less important ingredients. We extracted  the yolk, mixed it with mayo and some more vinegar and mustard, then put them back in the egg. I learned a little bit about how emulsions work, but it was mostly cooking and less science. Anyway, the demonic eggs ended up being delicious.

3/18/14 Algebra

     During yesterday's algebra class, we continued to review basic algebra. The class was mainly focused on the two types of linear equations and the how you solve them. I didn't really learn much, but it was good to recap.

3/13/14 Geography

     As we have been for the past few geography classes, yesterday, we looked at the map of Africa and collectively attempted to fill in the country names. Once we had finished the map (we had done 2/3 of it last class), we explored google street view throughout Africa.

3/12/14 Chemistry

     Yesterday in chemistry, I learned of some chemists in history and their accomplishments. I might drop chemistry.