SPORTS…

Finally the end of the year, everyone has been waiting for this time. It’s everywhere, agendas, calendar, and Mrs. Obannon’s board, everywhere!!! This was our last year in the middle school and I think that it has been unforgettable. Unforgettable because every single person in the grade has made it incredible. In aim, everyone is waiting for the day, the graduation day, Wednesday 11th. During this weeks, we have been working really hard to give in projects, movies, get good grades on our last tests, quizzes or home-works. Not only in projects, tests or home-works, but also in P.E and conduct to get our citizen sheet or awards. Anyways I’m anxious to finish 8th grade, graduate, go to vacations and not to do anything that has to do with school.  

About a month ago Mr. G, took some pictures for the graduation, the pictures were to post and decorate the place of the party. We were all very happy for the pictures, we were jumping, laughing, and enjoying the moment. After the pictures we have also been doing some other activities to plan the party and the ceremony. For example the speech we would give out in the ceremony, who are we going to walk trough the stage, meetings in the high school, so we have an idea of who is it going to be next year. But what I’m most excited about is the graduation party. It’s going to be in the Real Continental Hotel, all decorated, and I guess our pictures will be there. We were also planning on doing an after party, but Ale, how has the PERFECT house for it, doesn’t want to do it there so we have a BIG problem. Another reason why I want to be over with school is, vacations!!! I’m desperate to see my family, my friends back in Mexico, and not being so stressed for school. But I guess I will also miss all of my friends, and much more the one who are leaving CDS. 

Like I told you in my last blog, my class and I went to celebrate the end of 8^th grade in Manuel Antonio, a beach located in Costa Rica. On the last day of our trip, we were going to do our community service work which was cleaning the national park.  We were split into groups depending on our room numbers. From room number 1 to 7 (community service group) , and from room number 7 to 14 (beach group). I was in room number 1 so I got the best group, again. Group number one was the best group because of the people in it, and because we got to do the hard work first and then we could relax at the beach. The teachers were giving us the instructions about how to clean the paths, who our partners would be, and the rakes. Daichi was my partner, and I was happy to be with him because he´s a really nice guy. On the other hand I wasn’t happy AT ALL because we had to walk 1km. OK?!?! One whole kilometer with the sun burning hot!!! I finished my water before we got to the ¨cleaning¨ place. I was sooooo thirsty the whole time we were cleaning. Besides I was playing/fighting with Antonio, like always, which made me even thirstier.  The work we had to do was to clean the leaves off the path, so the people could walk easily through the park. As the time passed I was getting more and more tired, thirsty, sweaty, hot, and mad. Why mad? Because the  teachers wouldn’t let us stop cleaning, not even for a minute. I was dying to stop and go to the sea to cool off. Finally Gabriela, one of the staff members, yelled out that we had three minutes left. Still we couldn’t take a break. 10..9..8..7..6..5..4..3..2..1…TIMEE!!!! The first thing we did was run to the beach, that’s when our energy came back. While we were running, Mr. Katz stopped us because Lee, one of my classmates, was dehydrated and we had to wait for him. We gave him water, but he wouldn’t drink any. So we had to carry him up to the beach and as soon as we got there, he fell asleep. Honestly we were more anxious to jump in the water than wait for Lee to wake-up. (Lee, if you are reading this, sorry, but we were REALLY hot.) WOOW I was floating in water, fresh water. It felt so good just laying in the cold water with my friends around. As soon as everyone caught their breath again, we started doing body surf, talking, playing, and watching poor Lee not having fun. Now that I think about it poor Lee, seriously, he didn’t get the chance to feel how refreshing the ocean was or to be with his friends in the ocean. I believe fun moments with friends only happen once in a life time. And Lee was sleeping the whole time. While my friends and I were swimming Mr. Katz called us to go walk in the big rocks that were everywhere. Obviously as soon as Mr. Katz told us, I wanted to try. I went on top of the rock, unfortunately it was really really sharp, so my feet were hurting. All my friends were screaming and I didn’t understand why, as soon as I looked back a big wave was coming. I thought that if i stayed there I would end up all injured and it would hurt a lot, so I decided to jump. Hmm, for my bad luck it didn’t work. I fell into another rock and it hurt even worst because I was jumping so I landed harder. I was bleeding but I didn’t care anymore and I decided to keep playing with my friends. This one and a half hours passed so fast! And soon we had to get back to the hotel, get ready and go back to the school. =(

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Last week, I had a hip-hop seminar. Normally the seminar is for all classes and you have to do it all. This time the seminar team decided to make only an especial hip-hop class. The seminar was Friday May 2nd, and Sunday May 4th in the hotel Corobici. I had to go there on Friday and on Sunday too, but I just went there on Friday because on Sunday I was sick.  When I got there, there were people from all different schools and they were there for different classes. By the time I got there, I was 10 minutes late and the class was already started.  I had to go and change my cloth, get my bracelet, and find where my class was. Finally I found it and I was expecting at least people from my academy but there were just a few of them. The rest of the people were from another kind of schools, and they were another kind of people. In fact, I was scared because these people were all tattooed, with piercing everywhere, they’re hair all tided, they used another kind of language and they were really big.  They teacher was really nice and cheerful. Whenever I needed to ask something he was there to help me. Anyways I saw some of the people from my academy and I picked a spot near them. They teacher started the class with a warm-up that would help us with some techniques when dancing. When we were done with the warm-up we learned two different dances. The first dance was to show us how the guy’s techniques, the teacher. The second dance was just for fun, but the people from the class had different levels of dancing, and performing. That was all we did on Friday. I did so much exercise that the next day I could hardly move. I enjoyed this class because I learned new ways of dancing, new people, and the class was really cool.

Normally every Wednesday I get excited about writing my blogs. I love telling people how I feel about my passions and I love to think about it. Today is not one of those Wednesdays, and sincerely I still don´t know what I´m going to talk about. I´m going to go to a hip-hop seminar on Friday and I´m going to talk about it next week, so there goes another topic, one that I can´t write about today. I´ve already talked about soccer, ice-skating, and hip-hop. Now there´s another problem, my teacher told me that this blog had to be above 300 words, and if I don´t have anything to write about, how will I reach 300 words? Here I stopped for about a minute to come up with a good idea. I thought about erasing everything and starting over because why would I want people to know I don´t have any good ideas? But still I kept thinking and writing in the same blog. Finally I decided to talk about something I could consider a passion. I think it would be a good idea to tell my friends and people that find our bloggings how much I enjoy spending the day with all of my friends. They might say I´m really wierd but the truth is that when I´m with them I have a lot of fun. My day starts with Math class, I don´t really like the class, but what I like about it is how much fun we have in it. For example, three of my friends sit right behind me and they are always either talking , shouting, hitting each other or laughing. On the other side of the classroom is where the boys sit. There is this guy who is ALWAYS bothering EVERYONE, but its fun how he tells his funny and stupid jokes. When Math class is over, I go to History. My History teacher is really cool and he makes the class really happy. I alway sit with one of my friends, we talk and talk until Mr. Katz, my teacher, yells at us. Then comes break. I love when the bell rings because I´m normally starving and that´s when I get to eat. (I just realized that I have 370 words). Now comes english class. In this class I can´t really have that much fun becuase my teacher gave us assigned seats =(, but as soon as english class is over I have spanish and it´s one of the best classes. In this class we don´t have assign seats so I get to seat with whomever I want. There´s none of my girlfriends in my spanish class, but there are two really cool guys that I like to sit by. They are always telling jokes and they are really cool friends. After my spanish class I have Arts Blocks and then recess. Recess is my favorite hour in the day because there’s when I can be with most of my friends, talk, and laugh with all of them. I enjoy every second of it. When the bell rings I have reading time, but I can’t do much because my teacher don’t let us talk, just read. After reading time I have Literature, which is fun, especially this week; our class was working on the “Lord of the Flies” and we had to design the t-hsirts according with the story. Last class, Science which is really fun because my friends and I are always talking and laughing about ANYTHING, especially when we do labs or when we have free time. I could really consider spending times with my friends a passion because I enjoy being with them so much.  

I was at the skating rink with some of my friends when my coach, Lilian, came up to me and told me she needed to talk to me. I was really scared and worried about what she would say to me. I thought she could be mad at me becuase I didn´t put much effort into one of my skating classes called La Escuelita. I didn´t like this class because it was a big class with a lot of girls skating at the same time. I preferred private classes because the teacher paid more attention to me. I thought I was going to be in trouble for that. Finally when we got to talk, she told me about the National Skating Championship in the United States. Lilian told me that a group of girls from my skating rink were going to compete, and she wanted me to participate in it. I coudn´t believe it; I was so scared I was going to be in trouble and I never expected to hear that good news. My mom already knew about everything and she didn´t tell me so I would think my coach was mad at me. She had already paid for the tickets and had everything planned for the journey. Three weeks later I went to Washington with my mom and sister and the rest of the team, where the competitions were. We stayed at the Marriot Hotel, which was really nice and there we got all the team uniforms to wear. We had to participate in four competitions. The first one was jumps, the second one was spins, the third one was the free competition, and the fourth one was the mandatory routine. When I was about to go into the rink for the jumps, I was really nervous becuase I had to do a new jump that I had just learned a few days before. I knew this jump was going to be required, but when it came, I did it perfect and I got 4th place. This was the same day I had to do my spin competition. As soon as I finished the jump routine I had 15 minutes to change my clothes, fix my hair and be on the rink again.  In the spin routine i did really good, but I had to compete in 2 levels above and I got a 4th place too. For my free routine competition I was really excited, and it was my favorite one. I had to dance the song of Man I feel like a woman by Shania Twain. I was dressed up with a short dress, and my hair was really curled, I had a lot of make-up in my face and I also was really excited to go and skate. When I was doing my routine in the rink I wasn’t nervous at all, but I forgot all of my routine and I just started dancing from one place to another. Still I got 2nd place in it. When I was done with the dance and went out of the rink, a lady came up to me, took my hand and told me I was really good at this  and that I was amazing. I was really happy with myself because this events weren’t only competitions, but nationals, and this is where the whole country competes. My last competition was the mandatory routine, I was dancing a Tango song, which is a pretty elegant, and fancy dance. I had to compete with this routines several times, so I had it really practiced and I won 1st place. When the competitions were over, we all went to New York just for fun. We spend there 5 more days, and we went back to Mexico City. 

In this blog, I’m going to talk about hip-hop dancing. I’ve always liked to dance to most kinds of music, mostly active music. For example, I am not very good at ballet or jazz because that’s the kind of music I don’t like. The kind of music I like is the one that makes me move, like the music played at parties, loud music, or music that is not slow. When I was little, my mom put me in ballet classes. I never liked it, and I was always misbehaving not because I was a bad kid, but because I got really bored in classes. Finally I was so bad, that the teacher kicked me out of classes. Since then, I wasn’t in any dancing classes until a year ago when I found Warehouse Dance Center (WDC). This place gives all different types of dancing classes for all ages. For example, they have jazz, ballet, tap, break-dance, combinations of these classes, and also hip-hop. When I started there, I chose hip-hop because I liked the music, the people, and the type of dance. I went to three diferent academies looking for this kind of dance, but all of them had just jazz type dancing and I was looking for something more active. During my first classes at WDC, I felt really nervous because there weren’t only girls in the class, but also boys. In this class everyone gets really into the topic of hip-hop, they get all dressed up with hats, baggy pants, ties, big shoes, etc… I was really afraid someone in the class would make fun of me because I wouldn’t dance as well as they did. I stood in the back of the class and copied all the cool moves they had learned. Everyone was so into their dance that they didn’t even notice I was there. Now I’ve been going to classes for a year, and I love it. I never miss a class. I love the type of music, and all the energy I feel when I dance. Everyone else in the class feels the same way I do and they all try really hard to dance their best. This pushes me to make my best effort because I know I’m not the best one in the class, but I would totally like to be the best one day.

I have already talked about one of my passions, which is soccer, and now I´m going to talk about another one of my passions which is  ice-skating. I started skating when I was ten years old. When I was ten, I was living in Mexico, and a block away from my house there was an ice-skating rink inside of a mall. One day I went there with my mom and I saw one of my friends skating. She was so good at it that i wanted to try. When my sister and I were skating, my mom met the coach and put us in classes. That is when I started skating. When I play soccer, I can feel just how excited I get, but when I skate, it feels way better. Someone who has skated just once or twice can say its fun but when you skate every single day, you get really into it. Whenever I jump, spin, or simply skate I feel like I can fly. One thing that might sound a little bit random is how much I love the sound of the blades of my skates when they touch the ice. You can hear how the skates cut into the ice, mostly when you spin or when you land after a jump. What made me really nervous was when the competitions came because I was just waiting for the judges to call my name. I had to go out on the rink and skate all by myself with everyone looking at me. I still loved it, even though it made me very nervous. Now that I live in Costa Rica, I cannot skate any more because there are no ice-skating rinks in the country. I wish I could keep skating because I love it so much.

For me, freedom is expressing, saying, and doing what ever I want. As a blogger, freedom is something different. Freedom is posting or publishing what I think on the Internet. In this case of my English class, it means writing about my passions. I think there are so many definitions for freedom. For example, when you talk about the amendments to the constitution, there is freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of press etc.. When you talk about food, for example there is sugar free candy, fat free, lactose free and more. Another example of freedom is when you are in jail and don’t have freedom or you loose your freedom. Or when you are grounded because you either got bad grades, or did something bad, you also loose your freedom.When You use  your freedom of speech, you are saying what you think without anyone judging you, or telling you what is right or wrong. But you don’t always have freedom of speech; in school is where you have less freedom of speech, I think,  you can’t say wether you don’t like a teacher, or wear the clothes you want. So I think freedom of speech is saying whatever you want, and not being controlled by anyone else.

As you can see, soccer is one of my passions. I’ve always liked soccer, but I never played on a team or with someone helping me get better at it. When I was little, I had a small soccer ball and I used to play every afternoon with my dad and my sister. When I went to the beach or to any farm in Mexico, I played with either my family or friends. As soon as I came to live in Costa Rica, I started playing on the soccer team. I started playing soccer on the Varsity team. Every Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3:00 to 4:30 I played soccer with the high school girls. I stopped playing on the Varsity team because we had to  play on any middle school team to be on the Varsity team. Practices were on the same days, so I changed and played on the middle school team. I stopped playing for about four months, becuase I  got tachycardia. The doctors  tested me with stress tests to see what was wrong with my heart, but everything was good. I haven’t played on the team since January because the season is over. I still practice a little bit of soccer every weekend with my dad. We go out to the yard, and we play one-on-one. I do this with my dad because when he was a teenager he played for some  team in Mexico, and he is really good at this sport and gives me many tips. My dad likes this sport as much as I do. In Mexico City, there is a big stadium called Estadio Azteca, which we used to go every time  there was a soccer game, especially when our team was playing. We had box seats. It was awesome, and I enjoyed everything about it every time we went there, because we could see the game just perfect. Every time we went there I invited my cousins, who like soccer a lot too.Overall, soccer is my passion and I get really excited every time  I play or watch soccer. Even though I don’t plan to be a soccer player when I grow up, I still plan to keep playing for more years.