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.