Ranma 1/2

Ranma 1/2

Rumiko Takahashi

****1/2

I'm sorry that I haven't done book posts in a while. I have read a lot of books since my last post and I admit it, I was feeling lazy and didn't post. But my dad said I should at least post the 5 most recent books.

Ranma Saotome and his father have been living in China for years. One day, Mr. Saotome decides to take Ranma to a training ground full of cursed springs. They start to fight on top of the poles and Mr. Saotome falls into a spring where a panda had died 2000 years before and takes the panda's body. Then Ranma falls down into a spring where a young girl drowned 1500 years before and takesHER body. So now: If in cold water, Ranma turns to a girl. In hot water, he turns back into a boy. But how will Ranma live his life with this curse?

I really like this book because it is a graphic novel. But almost all Japanese or Korean graphic novels are read backwards. I find that a little bit more than confusing. But this book is published in a western format. A lot easier to read, you think?

My favorite part of the story is when Ranma meets Ryouga Hibiki, a classmate from his old high school (who has the worst sense of direction humanly possible) and discuss their "bread feud": In the cafeteria, it was always a race to get the last curry bread of the day. Ranma gets it and makes Ryouga mad. Then Ranma gets the last of the rest of the breads: sweet bean, chow mein, croquette, melon, cutlet sandwich, meat, and seaweed bread. Ryouga has pledged to get back at Ranma for that and 2 years later, has a showdown with him. This book is an excellent graphic novel! I hope you read it!

Ok...

ok ok ok. i didn't blog on christmas day. i was going to but was really busy. so sue me. (btw, i got the 4, 5, and 6 harry potter movies! YAY!)

Cookie Time!!

Around 1:30 today, my mom, Sebastien, Cecily, Sasha, and I decided to make Christmas cookies.

Of course, whenever my family does something together, it turns out to be a great memory. Today my brother and I made cut-out cookies, Cecily made jelly cookies, and Sasha and Yuyun (my maid) made sugar cookies. We had turned on music and churned out a few batches when my mom decided to come around and pat peoples faces with flour. (that's how I got my face dirty. Cecily did hers by herself. She dunked her nose in a flour bowl. But Sasha got hers out of trying new things.) Then we got to decorate the cookies. The animal cookies were the most fun to decorate. My mom made the icing and put it in a BAGUS bag and cut a hole in one end. Then we squeezed the bag and decorated the cookies. We had snowmen, stars, holly, bells, Christmas trees, angels and reindeer. We put sprinkles and ChaChas on the cookies too.

With my scraps, I made these really small balls of cookie dough and baked it, and as soon as they came out of the oven, I dunked each one in powdered sugar and stuck mini chocolate chips in the cookie. Then I sprinkled a little bit more sugar on top. It looked like the chocolate chips were hiding out in the snow!

My sisters cookies were the best though! She cut out circles of cookie dough and separated them equally onto her workspace. On one side she cut small circles in the middle of the dough. Then she baked it. As soon as they got out of the oven, she took strawberry jam and put a spoonful on a circle. Then she put the cut-out circle onto the top like a sandwich. It was SOOOO good!

You see? This is the kind of stuff that keeps me on my toes during the holiday seasons. And we all get a laugh out of it in the end!

Babysitting

Today I had to go to this charity place called JICC for the camp thing (a bunch of activities and stuff for a few hours) and it turned out that the instructor person couldn't come for some reason. So I had to play with 3-9 year olds (not exactly playing, more like babysitting.)

In the beginning, my mom was sitting with us on some couches when this lady came to take my brother into this room with a bunch of other little kids. We waited for another 15 minutes for the person to come, but they didn't come. So my sister and I had to go into the room with all the little kids to paint on CARDBOARD and color CANDLES and CHRISTMAS TREES. IT WAS PRACTICALLY TORTURE!!

Then it got a little weirder. This random guy and his friend (a girl) showed up. This guy was 8 and his friend was 9. The girl was ok, but they guy was soooo bratty! When Sasha (my 3 year old sister) accidentally stepped on his foot, he kicked her and started screaming "OWW!! SHE HURT ME!!" He got too rowdy and I had to protect these two girls Barbara and Victoria from him because they got really scared. They thought he was "evil" or something.

Then my brother got rowdy. Those two guys decided to freak all the little girls out by being "evil" and "scary". All the girls were talking to eachother in the tent and the guys would come up to the tent and start screaming and throwing plastic balls at it. And they wouldn't listen to the teacher ladies. After 1 1/2 hours, my mom came back from the store to pick us up. It explained to her what happened and she said that she paid for us to be creative, not to babysit other people's kids. What makes it even worse is that the kids think that I am coming back again tomorrow to do the same thing. Like I said yesterday, "If given the chance to stay home, take it. You might not live in the outside world." I would say this is a really good way to show what I am talking about.

3 Hours of Weird

Ok, I was sleeping peacefully this morning until my sister shouted upstairs, "Hey Maya! Get up! We are going out to breakfast!" 40 minutes later, we are riding in the car. "Where are we going to eat?" I ask my dad. "I don't really no yet." I thought that this answer was a little weird because HE was the one driving the car. He should know where he was going. We pull into the Kristal Hotel. "Were here!"

Seriously! We were eating at the Kristal Hotel! (bad memories. I was stuck there for almost three months)They have this restaurant called Kafe Pinang and we used to eat there every day. It was a little weird because all the staff and security guard recognized us (even the laundry guy) and all of this Christmas stuff was propped up all over the place. Not just Christmas trees. Plaster reindeer and Santa Claus, live Christmas trees and flashing wreaths were all over the place. Plus my sister was acting really strangely. She sat still for about 40 minutes, then started running around the buffet in zig-zagged circles. Everyone was staring at us.

After that, my mom decided that she need a membership at the health club place (we are still in the hotel) and we check it out. Sebastien and Sasha kept on walking into the exercise room to check out the machines and the people using them. After that, the Salon and Day Spa caught her eye.

The morning was getting weirder and weirder by the minute. Mom, Cecily, and I all went into the salon and Cecily got a manicure. It would have been pointless for me to get one because I have no nails (Literally. I have bitten them down the where you can see skin.) So I sat there for 40 minutes doing nothing. I had to watch a soap opera through a mirror while my mom read a magazine. (She was going to get her nails done but they didn't have what she wanted.) It was the most boring time of my life. What made it even worse was every 15 minutes, Cecily would turn around in her chair and ask me "Are you bored?", laugh, and turn around.

Well, I lived through that, and I have some words of advice for you: "If given a choice to stay at home, take it. You might not live in the outside world."

GO BROMO!!

GO BROMO!!

We had Madness on Thursday. We are divided into 6 different volcanoes: AGUNG, BROMO, KRAKATAU, MERAPI, RINJANI, and SALAK. I was in Bromo of course. We had to do to activities for our volcano. Mine were Water Relay and Chopstick Lari Lari.


The water relays were really fun. In the beginning, each team had to stand in front of a bucket of water with 1 cup. You had to fill the cup water and only holding the bottom and with 1 arm behind your back, run across the field and dump it in an empty bucket. Then you had to run backwards to your team with the cup on your forehead. We did ok with that. Then they changed the rules. We had to run backwards to the bucket and sprint back to our team. We did better in that. After that, we had to build a chain and pass 5 cups of water along the line as fast as we could. We got second place after Krakatau. YAY!

Ok. I sucked at Chopstick Lari Lari. We had to pick up rocks with chopsticks and run across the field and dump it in our teams bowl. I am pretty good at using chopsticks, but the rocks were shaped really weird and our chopsticks were different lengths so it was harder to pick up the rocks. We had to go forwards, backwards, on one foot, and with a partner. I did the worst when we did it with partners. For 3 reasons:


1) My partner was way shorter than me
2) She didn't exactly run, I had to kind of drag her
3) She kept on dropping the rock

In the end we got sixth place. SNIFF SNIFF!

After all of that, the score came out as this:
1) Agung
2) Krakatau
3) Bromo
4) Salak
5) Rinjani
6) Merapi

Ok, but I think we can do better next time. GO BROMO!

After that, we got to see the Student Vs. Teacher Basketball Game! In the beginning, Mr. Boots tossed a huge ball up into the bleachers and we whacked it around for about 10 minutes. We were all screaming our team cheers and Bromo was desperately trying to accomplish the wave. Then the sixth grade team came on. It was cool because they were playing good music (the kind that makes you want to get up and run somewhere) in the background. We beat the teacher 8 to nil! GO 6TH GRADERS! After all the games were finished, we realized that we had beaten the teachers in every game! YAY!

After that, we went to the movie we signed up for. (On Tuesday, some posters were posted on the door of Q5 with 5 movie choices:

1) Napolean Dynamite
2) Pirates Of The Carribean
3) Coraline
4) Flushed Away
5) Like Mike

I signed up for Coraline.) Coraline was showing in Mr. Profrock's room. (P6) We got to sit on pillows (well, not really. I had to sit under a table.) and eat mentos and popcorn. After that...

VACATION TIME, BABY!

Friends

This is a video that I made using pictures of my friends. Sorry about the "commercial''. Its a bit too long. Enjoy!

VPA Day (continued)

Ok ok ok. VPA day wasn't THAT great at all. After lunch (which I had to spend in a long line for a piece of pizza), we had to change into our concert attire. It wasn't all that great because we left the 6th grade area late and had to go all the way to FA6 to tune. And we (Ceri, Alisha, Tiffany, and I) couldn't find a bathroom to change in that didn't smell terrible and wasn't occupied. Sad.

Well, after we changed and tuned, we got to the FAT and waited for the viewers to arrive (we were first). It was a lot weirder than the practice. They turned up the florescent lights so high we couldn't see the crowd or our stand partners without burning our eyes. Then Ji Soo (strings concert master) started the whole thing off with this little speech that Dr. Eng wrote (she was like don't be freaked out when the Beginning Strings play. It might sound bad. SERIOUSLY.)

After that, we watched 2012. Dr. Eng said that the first 60 people (strings) would get free food. She gave all of us a bag of peanuts. Honestly. Most of us had to skip lunch to get there and she gave us peanuts. Tsk tsk. Anyway, the special effects were cool, but the science was really really crappy. About halfway through the movie, Hella and I walked to the cafeteria barefoot to go buy french fries and drinks. By the time we got back, the movie was over and we had to change back into our concert clothes and tune AGAIN. (By this time, I WAS SO FREAKING TIRED!) Then we practiced RHYTHM AND BLUES again, except Dr. Eng thought that we were "rushing" so she randomly pulled this big drum out and started banging it to "keep us in tempo" and brought it out in front of our parents. All I am trying to say is that it wasn't as fun as I thought it would be.

VPA Day

Today was VPA day! Our schedules are sooo weird today. Each of our blocks are 1 hour long and we have a break in between block 1 and 2 and lunch after blocks 3 and 4. After that the people who aren't in the VPA concert go to their homeroom and the performers go to the FAT theater in the High School.

In mandarin, we watched MULAN 2 and KUNG FU PANDA in Mandarin. It was cool because we got sto sit on beanbags and eat, but I didn't really enjoy the movie that much because it was hard to tell what was going on. Okay, ya, I've seen these movies a billion times, and they even had English subtitles, but its just not the same. They actors were different and it was in a different language so it made the experience a little bit different.

I am in the VPA (strings) and we are playing with the beginning strings for RHYTHM AND BLUES and with the Advanced Strings we are playing VARIATIONS FROM HARRY POTTER. After that, the Advanced Strings play Tchaikovsky (that music makes us Intermediate Strings people look bad. haha) The concerts is from 1:10 - 2:30. After that, us strings people have a chance to go to FA6 in the High School and watch 2012. YAY! (I haven't seen 2012 yet, but all the 7th graders say it is a really sad movie. They are all saying that the Eiffel Tower is going down, Mount Everest will be underwater, The Chrystler Building will collapse, Russia will break away from Europe and stuff like that. But hearing all of this, I think I am going to believe them.)

THIS DAY IS GOING TO BE SO MUCH FUN!

10 Vocab Definitions

1) pleadingly

2) embezzle

3) traumatic

4) adhesive

5) embankment

6) eclectic

7) lagging

8) revelation

9) malevolent

10) dejection

5 Vocab Definitions

1) jubilation 

2) extortion

3) pensive

4) seminary

5) pavilion