Summer

I like the summer break. First, there is no school. Second, you can do fun stuff all day long without having to worry about homework or catching the bus. Third, and probably most important, you have a better mood without school stress eating your brain. This summer seemed like the longest summer.

A regular day would go like this. Wake up and play piano, eat breakfast, and do some typing. Around afternoon, we would play with the Legos and the Jenga blocks and those toys. Around evening, we would do some math and play the chopstick game.

To those who do not know what the chopstick game is, I will explain. We get a tray and each person gets a pair of chopsticks and a different colored group of ten marbles. What you have to do is that you have to get your marbles from your section of the tray to your container using your chopsticks. It was a very hard game.

I like when we went to Canada or Atlanta the best. I like that because they had cool museums and attractions like the zoo and the science and tech museums.

I hope this summer wont end soon but poor me.

We went to Raven Rock State Park which was near Lillington and Fuquay-Varina and camped there for a night. I think the only bad part was that we had to hike two miles to get to our campsite. Also, there was no water at the campsite so we had to carry all the water bottles with us. Also, on the first day, we hiked back to the parking site to meet the ranger and then hike back. There were some pretty cool things on the trail though. There was a place called Overlook and that was basically a stone balcony that you could see the Cape Fear River from. Also, we saw the rock which was this huge rock that hung over the water and was as tall as two or three houses! The lunch was boiled hot dogs and the dinner was Easy Mac which was a macaroni and cheese thing that you poured water into and then it became something close to macaroni and cheese. We also had marshmallows and mine never got brown, one side expanded but it was always still white. After that, we went to bed. Our tent was super hot and I was stuck to the sleeping bag. Plus the cicadas were deafening and there was an owl that kept on hooting. Finally I fell asleep and woke up early next morning. I packed my stuff and sat outside. It was cool and not that hot. Breakfast was eggs in a bag and we did the hike all over again and finally got to the parking lot. We took a car back to Raleigh.

CNN

The CNN tour was probably not as good as before. I think that was because we went there before and we knew most of the stuff. They showed us the studios and the Teleprompter which showed the words on a machine and the anchor would read off of that instead of the hard copy. I also learned that when it said [break] on the Teleprompter, the anchor had to turn the page on the hard copy. Before the CNN tour, there was a building that said Cartoon Network on it so Victor said that if someone wanted him to watch CNN, he would watch Cartoon Network. The tour started with a 8-story escalator ride to a bid fabric globe. Then, they toured the studios and the rooms that were full of computers. They said they had to fact-check everything that went on TV. They wanted everything to be right facts or then they would lose their reputation. The CNN place was not that cool anymore once we toured it again.

At the High Museum of art, we saw a lot of Dali paintings. They were really weird looking. They had random stuff in it. One had a horse with a wheel biting a telephone and the other one had a liquid clock. The pictures were like someone cut and paste objects into the canvas. Here are some.

Then, we went to make some dream Catchers. It was a wire ball with beads strung onto it. Mine also had coils filled with beads. Here is a picture of a Dream catcher. It is a professional one and is flat. Ours were sphere-ish shaped. It is supposed to catch your dreams.

Medieval Times

Medieval Times was way fun. It was a arena where knights on horseback fought each other and did equestrian competitions while you got to watch and eat. The first thing was the introduction where each knight was announced. They put you in a color section and those were the knights that you cheered for. We were in the black and white section and the knight that we were cheering for was wearing a red cross with black and white checkered armor and cloak. The other colors were red, blue, yellow, red and yellow, and green. The next thing was where the King rode on a horse and had the squires come out and hold the different banners. Then, when all the knights rode away, it became dark and it showed the prince getting kidnapped. There was a horse show after that and the horses did different battle movements. Then, they had a person with a falcon on her wrist come in and the falcon flew over everybody's head and when she threw a weight up into the air, the falcon caught it and landed. Then, came the part where the knights fought each other. First, they had the two people on horseback and when one fell off the other would jump down and continue the fight. They first fought with two swords and then when someone lost his, a squire would give him another weapon such as a flail or a mace. Then, someone would grow tired or make a mistake and be "killed". That's what happened and then our knight "killed" the red and yellow. When he was cheering, the evil Green knight came and attacked him so he stumbled into the fog. Then, the greens brought out the kidnapped prince and were going to kill him. But, the black and white knight came and cut the prince free and they fought the evil knight and his henchmen. The chekered knight (the black and white) "killed" many of the henchmen before taking on the Green knight. The Green knight grabbed a sword from one henchman (who was subsequently "killed") and fought the prince. It was two good guys versus one evil guy plus four henchmen. The checkered knight fought the henchmen while the prince battled the evil knight. Soon, the both only had one sword each. Then, the evil knight punched the prince and knocked him down. Then, the checkered knight came over and knocked the green knight down and his sword flew away. "Loyalty or death!" shouted the king. The green knight hesitated and then roared "RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" And tried to push the checkered knight away but got killed. it was avery good show and most times, I was shivering with excitement. I hope to DEFINATELY go again.

Stone Mountain

Stone Mountain was this huge park that had cool activities and a Skyride. It also had a Duck, a train and a Lasershow. The first thing we did was ride the Skyride. it was a thing that ran suspended on a cable and went up and down the mountain. At the end of the smooth ride, the cabin began to rock back and forth. Then, we got out and walked on to the top of Stone Mountain. The air was cool and there was a thick fog so we couldn't see much from the top. We ate some food there and then went down the mountain. There was a big carving of Stonewall Jackson, Jefferson Davis, and Robert E. Lee on the mountain. We passed it as we came down. It was even bigger than Mt. Rushmore! We went to the Skyhike next where we went on a big obstacle couurse. The line was really long and we waited a long time. It first started with level one where there was a lot of wood ones. Ropes were the hardest as we soon found out. There was a thing with only one rope and nothing else. Of course we had a rope attatched to ourselves in case we fell but it was still pretty scary. There was also a level two and that was higher up. My favorite obstacle was the one rope one. You had to move side ways so you wouldn't fall. There was also a level three and that was the highest obstacle course. The one that was the scariest was the one with hoops of rope and nothing connecting them so you could swing there for a very long time. What you had to do was to swing one foot to the next hoop and grab on with both hands. We also saw a 4-d movie about Journey to the center of the Earth. It wasn't as good as the original movie. We also saw a man blowing glass. The train ride was weird because someone had a seizure and we got stuck in the middle of no where. The lasershow was cool! It had a song for the Star Spangled Banner and they had blue red and white fireworks at the end. I liked Stone Mountain because it had fun stuff and cool stuff.

The coke place

The world of Coca Cola was interesting. It was new and they had a Coke museum and other stuff. The first thing we saw when we got inside were huge Coke bottles that were from different countries. Then, we went to the Coke museum that had signs and other stuff that were used to advertise Coke. It had some paintings by Norman Rockwell. After that, there was a movie called Happiness factory that showed what happened when you got a Coke from a vending machine. There were little blue people that would fill the bottle with Coca Cola and then some penguins would chill it and then it would fall off a big cliff and you could get it. After that, we went to the bottling plant there that bottled cokes. it produces more than the Coca Cola place needs. Then, we went to Milestones of Refreshments where there were Coke artifacts from around the world like a delivery truck. There was also a thing that told you how much things were when Coke was 5 cents. A hotel room was 1 dollar!! At the end, there were Olympic torches. I also saw a whole bunch of Olympic pins. We also saw "The Secret Coke Formula" that was 4-d and had a lot of special effects. There was a button on the seat and when we ran into a piece of wood, it poked us in the back! Also, the seats always moved around so we were jerked from one place to another. Then, we went to Taste it where we tasted different flavors. I liked Inca Kola or Bitter Lemon.

Then, we went to Pop Culture where we saw things made out of Coke. Then, we went home.

The Georgia Aquarium was huge. It had different exhibits with different themes. There was a tropical diver for the tropics, a Cold Water thing for Alaska and Canada, a Exploring Georgia for Georgia, a River scout for the North American rivers and such and a Ocean Voyager so you can see the whale sharks and other huge fish. First, we went to the touch pool. It was where the Southern stingrays swum around in circles with a few really small hammerhead sharks. You could touch them and so we did. The hammerhead felt smooth while the rays were jusst plain slimy. If you walked into Georgia Explorer, then, there was another touch pool where you could touch shrimp. The shrimp always ran away so I didn't touch them much. Past that was yet another touch pool where you could touch horseshoe crabs. If you walked out of that and into River Scout, you got to see a river above your head and different parts of the river with different animals like turtles and garfish on both sides. at the end, there were two Asian small-clawed otters but they were sleeping. Next, we went on a tour that showed us the "behind the scenes" stuff like the top of the Ocean voyager and the top of the River Scout. After that, we went to Cold Water thing (I dont know what thing is) and saw some otters getting fed. I took a million pictures and when we were done, the camera ran out of batteries. There was also a penguin crawl tunnel where you crawed through a tunnel and got close to the penguins by standing up in glass cylinders that let you take pictures. Even old ladies were doing it! We saw a couple of beluga whales and went on a 4-d show called Deepo's underwater wondershow. It was pretty informative. Then, the coolest part was when we went into the tunnel of glass and saw the huge whale sharks and manta rays.They just swam over our heads and passed on. There were Giant grouper, HUUUGE Whale sharks, and manta rays. There were also some sawfish. I liked the Georgia Aquarium because it was just cool.

Zoo Atlanta- Parakeets.

The parakeet place was probably the coolest place in the zoo. It had hundreds of parakeets and you could feed them seed sticks that were one dollar each. However, I became more cautious because I saw a little girl and she got pooped on. The parakeets mere mostly green and yellow but there were some blue and all white ones. You could hold the seed stick close to them and they would nibble on them. They ate soooo slow! When 30 minutes passed, they still hadn't finished the seed stick! Some times, when they were scattered around the trees, they would suddenly fly to one corner and form a green and blue rainbow on the netting. They were very cute. There was a green one that looked like he had a beard so I called him the "king". The "King" did not want to eat from my seed stick.

Next to the parakeet place, there was a warthog place and there were 4 warthogs in there. They looked like Pumba in the movie the Lion King. They were not very smelly at all.

I liked the red pandas , the komodo dragon, and the pandas the most. The red panda was sleeping but you could automatically tell that they were super cute. He was more dull orange than red and was like a rug because he was spread out. The komodo dragon was cool because he looked so ugly and fearsome. He had a long tail that was scaly and a ugly head that looked liked a giant lizard head. He was resting. The pandas I liked most because they just looked really cuddly and cute. One was sleeping and the other one was eating bamboo. It was almost human like how it ate. They were fatter than I thought and very sad looking. They looked very, very sad. I saw a thing that talked about the pandas trip from China to the US. They said that they had first class cabins but when I looked at the "cabin" they were in, it was just a cage the size of a cardboard box!

There were also some rides that we did such as the train. We did the train and figured out that since we had wristbands, it was free so we stayed on 16 times! Then, we went to the merry go round which we rode on 4 times and then we went to the rock wall. The rock wall was very tall so I was kind of scared the first time. I almost went to the top but fell! I fell! Well, there was an automatic belay system that made the fall enjoyable and I felt that I was flying.

Assi

Assi was a huge store even huger than Sam's or Walmart. It sold food mostly. They had a million samples from Mexican food to Korean food. We went in there just planning to look around and then eat at a resturaunt but after we went in, we wouldn't go out so we stayed there and when we came out, we were not hungry one bit! There was also a Mexican section there where there was a wheel that you could spin and you could win things like a soda or a box of tortillas. Most people got a bumber sticker though. My brother however, won a soda!