Rain of Fire

My computer blew up. It actually blew up a while ago, I just haven’t posted it.

Posted by Alina at 9:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mood: Calm
Event of the Day: Omid drew a mustache and a beard on himself with a gluestick and green marker. Oh, and during science Connie and I tried to draw a cat with a movement detector.

Over Spring Break, we went on the Carnival: Inspiration to the Caribbean. The first day was in Florida, then at sea after we boarded the cruise. The second was in Cayman Islands, the third was in Cozumel, Mexico, and the fourth was back at sea. The fifth was back in Florida and flying home.

I’m not actually going to summarize all the days, because this entry would then halve the size of the scrollbar on my blog. But I have pictures (many pictures) that I’ll post. All of these pictures represent my favorite memories from the cruise. :)


We were on one of the lower levels of the cruse. The room was comfortable, but really small. I took a picture of the little ledge in front of the window, where I put my pillows and sat while I drew random stuff in my sketchbook (whose pages became brown with Snapple ice tea on the plane).

The cleaning guy made animals out of towels and put them on the bed. They also came with two complementary chocolates. :D

Lloyd, I was thinking of you when I picked this one :D. When we went ashore on Cayman Islands, we took a tour that included a turtle farm, the city of Hell (I got a postcard that says I went to Hell and back), and a stingray sandbar. I wish I could post a picture of the stingrays, but we couldn’t take any good ones with the digital cameras. I love stingrays :D The ones at the sandbar were like kittens - they’d just swim right up to you and let you pick them up or pet them. They were so sweet ;__; Waaaaah. <3

You never truly appreciate how blue the tropical sea is until you see it. The water was so pretty and clear that I couldn’t resist taking this picture.

My mom took a picture of our cruse ship when we were in Cozumel. The ship doesn’t actually dock - people who want to go ashore have to be ferried across.

In Cozumel, we went on an underwater tour called Snuba. It’s sort of like a cross between snorkeling and scuba diving - instead of a foot-long cylinder, your mask is connected to a long tube and an oxygen tank that floats above you as you swim. It’s a whole new world under the water. I wish I could have taken a picture, but underwater cameras weren’t allowed. We didn’t see anything unusual or particularly special, like a dolphin or an eel, but there were these florescent blue fish and lace-like purple coral that I really loved.

One of the shops in Cozumel had shelves and shelves of bright, colorful merchandise. My mom must have taken pictures of each one. The tourist section we were ferried to was filled with shops and vendors. One of the vendors painted on feathers, and when we bought a shimmery one with a robin, the guy gave me one of his feathers so that I could try painting on one.

The dinners were my favorite part of the whole cruse. The other two families at our table were so much fun. Our waitress was awesome. That’s her in the picture, teaching us how to spin our towels so that they wouldn’t twist up. She used to be dancer in Greece, if I remember right.

I have a picture on my desk that one of the cruse photographers took during dinner. I can’t remember the last time I looked so happy.

This was after we’d left the cruse. We were wandering around Florida while we killed time before the flight back to California, and there was this man hand-rolling cigars in a museum. It was something like $60 for a box.

Still killing time. The Florida Aquarium was featuring Sea Dragons, and my mom really wanted to see them. They weren’t as fun as the baby otters or the penguin, but they’re so beautiful. It was hard getting a good picture through the glass wall. (It’s actually made of plastic. o.O)

It was a fun vacation. :D We got back at, like, 5 in the morning. Woke up the next day like I would have anyways. xD

Posted by Alina at 4:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

… when a fanfiction writer is getting a little obsessed when she uses her own characters for school assignments. >_>”

Posted by Alina at 10:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mood: Content, happy, satisfied
Event of the Day: synchronized screaming with Nan, not smashing Corwin on Centrifuge (I’ll explain later)

OMGOMGOMGOMGOMOMG 8th GRADE TRIP TO GREAT AMERICAAAA 8D 8D 8D It’s for our motion unit in science, and yes we had a -little- bit of homework. But that included very…deep and cheesy summaries of rollercoaster experiences, so hey. And someone mentioned something about “in the hands of gravity.” That…may have been my actual Event of the Day.

This was a nice little fountain we saw when we walked in, so I stopped to take a picture and…immediately fell behind of the group. We all saw that coming.

Before this, I’d never been on a loop rollercoaster. I thought we were heading for TopGun, which I remembered to be a rather simple loop rollercoaster that went up and back (I later found out differently), and instead we ended up at Invertigo. Invertigo not only had very, very tight loops, but corkscrews as well. The carts went once around the track, then back again along the same route. I think going backwards was pretty trying. I haven’t screamed like that since the screaming contest we had at Chinese school :D

We went on a bunch of other rides too, most of which I didn’t take pictures of. Survivor, bumper cars (CORWIN DO NOT SAY I DIDN’T OWN YOU) all three water rides (we also stood on the bridge to get a ‘spray’ from passing carts on the water ride. Instead everyone but Corwin got soaked), a very relaxing spinning ride, and Centrifuge (twice). First time on Centrifuge I went with Nan, and the spinning ended up squishing us on one side. Second time Corwin was going alone, so I just got back on. This time I stayed on my side, but it took some serious hugging-the-cart powers.

We also went on TopGun, which is now my favorite ride. It went as fast or faster than Invertigo, and it also had loops and corkscrews, but for some reason I was nowhere near as scared. I kept my eyes open the whole time, through dives and all. I remember spending part of the ride screaming, “OPEN YOUR EYES KATIE!!!” Aside from the head-banging (which I don’t remember but felt later) and throwing-against-restraints-ness, I felt like I was flying. I always write in my fanfictions about high-speed flying, and I’ve got a pretty good sense now of how much skill and fearlessness it would take to do it with just a pair of wings.

I ran ahead of everyone and snapped this picture as we were walking into the parking lot. Funny, I thought I got Corwin in there, but apparently not. This is one of my favorite pictures, with Connie looking totally pimpin with her new cell phone, and of course, Nan spazzing out over there. It’s also one of the few pictures I have of Katie. I’m going to miss her when she moves to Maryland. ): Not much longer now.

Anyways, our bus was about half an hour late, and there was traffic on the way back to school. I remember waking up with the squeaking of an inflatable hammer, and Paras trying so hard to explain the difference between a guy and a girl to Crystal. Either she really doesn’t know anything about sex, or she’s one damn good actress.

Man, I love my backpack, with its big-ass zipper, upsidedown Adidas logo, and the cell-phone pouch on the strap that works very well for an iPod, earbuds and all. 8D And dip ‘n dots. Those are pretty awesome.

EDIT: Because of Emily a few unnamed individuals…more pictures 8D

Waiting for the bus 1
Waiting for the bus 2
I TOTALLY CAUGHT YOU EMILY
Pretty flowers 1 :D
Waiting in line for TopGun 1
Waiting in line for TopGun 2 (don’t judge us, we were bored)
Waiting in line for TopGun 3 (aHERM >->”)
TopGun
Centrifuge 1 (I don’t know that girl in the bottom corner >->”)
Centrifuge 2 (or those two crazy people)
Pretty flowers 2 (lalalala)

Posted by Alina at 6:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Mood: Content
Today’s most interesting event: almost passing out during track practice from dehydration

Man, I remember when my xanga was my life and I made detailed posts everyday. It must have bored the crap out of my friends, but hey, at least I posted. Now I’m 3 weeks overdue for a Spring Break entry. Slacker lolz.

Anyways, I guess RF is mine now, since P’s using Phrontistery. It feels lonely. And it feels like a lot of effort. Ewwwww D: Lol. My fault anyways for not doing anything except for posting. Super, long, 8234923 paragraph posts.

Anyways, I just picked out the pictures from the cruise that I want to post, and as soon as I have them booted down a couple hundred pixels I’ll post them, with some highlights about the trip. Normally I would summarize every day, but we all remembered what happened when I did that with the NYLSC conference, eh? I only summarized one day, and that summary was about 3 pages long.

Anyways, STAR testing week is almost over. The Language Arts section this year was surprisingly easy, but even so I’m not counting on a perfect score. Math was such a letdown. The night before the math test day I learned every lesson in Chapter 12 so that I would be ready, but the hardest question only went up to Chapter 11, which we already covered in class. Hmm. Maybe I shouldn’t call it a letdown…

…because the STAR test bit me right back in the History section. I swear, I guess on at least half of the questions. The section covered material from all three years of middle school, so I hardly remembered any of it. It’s the same with Science, which we’ll be tested on tomorrow. I hope I do better on the science section, since I find the subject more interesting that history.

I’m also alternately working on the 100 drawings theme challenge from DeviantArt, based on any of the fajillion characters from my fanfiction series in each one. Sometimes I wonder how other artist who do the same thing know so much about fictional characters that they can relate them to a theme like #21: Vacation. But after writing even just a paragraph-long biography for each of my characters, I feel like I know each one as if they were real people. Now if only I had the motivation to draw them instead of just think up the ideas…xD

I feel like I’m rambling.

Posted by Alina at 7:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This looks familiar, doesn’t it?

Everyone needs a new beginning sometime. I suppose it’s my turn. See you guys soon, hopefully.

Take good care of RF, Alina. I know you will, although I didn’t leave the templates completely perfect (I don’t think.). You’ll be fine, though. Use your wonderful artistic skill, eh? ::patpat::

Thank you. You know who you are.

Posted by Siu-Yuan at 9:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

TO DO BEFORE STAR TESTS:

• Review history textbook
• Review Constituion, Bill of Rights, and Amendments
• Review Columbus, American Revolution, and Civil War
• Study history review sheets from 6th/7th grade
• Review science textbook
• Study science review sheets from 6th grade
• Study science notebook from 7th grade
• Review math textbook

And…Kumon…

Okay, spring break summary is like, 3 weeks overdue, I SWEAR I will find some time to look at the schedules I saved and post what I can remember T__T

And even though I didn’t save it, I only did the daemon test once, and I got a fox named Skaede. Just like Raede and Kaede, my name-matching pair from one of my fanfictions 8D. If I ever get a pet in maplestory on Raede, I’ll name it Skaede. Whoooooo. :D

Posted by Alina at 9:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)