One of the wierdest days of my life

I cannot recall most of my day, but starting from 1pm to 3pm I can. It started off with one of my friends asking me to ride my bike over too his house to play Xbox. I said I would, but right after my mom said I have to eat lunch, brush my teeth, and do some sort of workout, that annoyed me a little because I was so close to sneaking out. I was actually happy that I stayed for lunch because my mom made one of her famous George Forman sandwiches that really hit the spot. When I was done brushing my teeth I decided to do forty push ups and forty sit ups, but right in the middle of my sit ups my friend calls me, and since my phone was in my pocket and was set on vibrate the feeling scared the crap out of me because I thought a spider was in my pants. Then I realized it was not when I heard my annoying ring tone. My friend's first words were what I exactly expected,"Where the **** are you, did you run into Tony the towel?" For those of you who don't know him Tony is a skater kid who hangs out with this group of kids, and one of my friends is friends with him, but stopped when he found out he was doing drugs. I told him "no" and said I would be over in a couple of minutes. Now I am going to fast forward to when I have been at my friends house for about an hour. We had finally got board of Xbox and wanted to get a football game going with random kids walking the streets (except for Tony). In the end no one was out except for our friend Bruce who is a beast at football, and is hilarious. Bruce said he had not had lunch and convinced us to go to Subway, when we were in Subway my friend started making fun of the one of the employees making us get kicked out. i told Bruce I had some good food at my house, but he had wanted some pop so we went to the gas station and all of us got a pop. Now here is where the climax starts we are crossing 5 mile and I stop right at the edge of where I can get on the other side, ad a lady in a car pulls up next to me and starts cussing me out, while she is doing this Bruce is also cussing, and Ia m too embarrassed to really do anything, but to tell the lady to drive off. I stayed in this same situation for about 30 seconds, until the lady finally realizes that she is holding up a long line of cars, and leaves. When I am on the other side Bruce is now as high as the sky, and starts doing crazy tricks on his bike and swearing randomly and me and my friend Kevin try and calm him down but are unsuccessful. When we finally get to my house Kevin and I school Bruce in 21, which shuts him up for the rest of the day.

Rwandan genocide

The Rwandan genocide was a tragic event, and hopefully Paul Kagame will succeed in not letting this ever happen again. When we had the Rwandan debate in class I read a lot of articles about the genocide and Paul Kagame. I am disappointed in my country for not stepping in on this situation because they could have put an end to this by just sending in a couple of tanks. The U.N. was an embarrassment to the entire world for being scared of a couple of Africans with machetes, and not sending any more help even though they could. Juvenal Habyarimana played a big part in this for brainwashing the Interahamwe to kill their neighbors. He did this out of fear, but a smarter thing to do if you were scared would be to flee the country, which would look really bad, but millions would not have died. People like the Red Cross risked their lives to save some of the moderate Hutus and Tutsis without the help of any other countries or organizations.

My opinion on the genocide is that it was Juvenal and the Interahamwe's fault that the killing had started. Paul Kagame was just trying to save his fellow Tutsis, so I do not believe it is his fault because mostly Tutsis were killed and he is a Tutsi. The debate in class made me learn more about the genocide from different group's views. I saw that everyone including the ones who did most of the killing all thought that they were doing good, and no one admitted that it was their fault. The groups that were commonly blamed were the Interahamawe, Juvenal, UN, U.S, and Belgium.

The U.S. was blamed a lot because they never stepped in to stop this, when they could have done it quite easily. The Interahamawe were also commonly blamed because they were a group that killed many people, but their excuse was that they were brainwashed by Juvenal. The UN was blamed for the same reason the U.S. was. Last but not least was Belgium because they played a stereotypical role by favoring the Tutsis over the Hutus causing an even greater conflict between the two groups.

My group, Paul Kagame was not blamed for the genocide as frequently as the other groups, but we were blamed because we had went into Rwanda to kill all of the Hutu extremists and gain power over Rwanda. Our comeback was that mostly Tutsis were killed and Paul was a Tutsi, so he did not do as much as others did.

The American scholar

Emerson's argument in "The American scholar" about American society still holds true today.

Emerson says that man is becoming his job, and that man should not be the master of one job or talent but many. Man should try and learn more then one ability because of many reasons, including, more money, benefiting the world because you can do many things to help people, and if you lose one job it should be easier for you to find another one. Emerson says that not a lot of people are not multi talented because they believe that they can only do one thing, and don't try to excel in other talents. An analogy would be if you only workout on your arms that is all that will be strong, but if you work on your legs and core also you will be better built.

My plan for high school and college for my world languages is to take German through high school and to take Spanish in college, which will make me look better being trilingual than most people when I am interviewing for a job. Many of our past presidents have been multi talented, like Benjamin Franklin who was a scientist, inventor, writer,and president of the United States. A good quote from Emerson that explains what I am writing about is, "Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, into many things", because Man is becoming his job, and not thinking about anything else or what else he could excel at.

The last haunted house I have gone two was three stories and was put together quite well. I forget what it was called, but it was somewhere in Dearborn, and was pretty popular. When I went their with my friend we got lost on the way their and ended up at a Wendy's, where they told us where to go. When we got their it just looked like an old factory then when you went around to the back their was a whole big group of people waiting to get in. When you first walk in someone with a old hockey mask and sword tries to stab you, which leads you too a long hallway with a dead corpse hanging from the ceiling. When the hallway is over my friend and I ended up in a dark room where a witch is standing and tries to act like a machine, but is really a real person, and she jumps out at me and gets in my face, which was a little weird.

I am going to skip a little to a part where a bunch of Jason masks are hanging from the wall, and one of them moves, and you find out it is someone trying to grab you. After that there is a long bridge with a farmer at the end who looks possessed and runs down the bridge almost knocking me down. When that is over a clown with blood all over his face grabs you and shoves you in a room where a old lady is. The old lady slowly creeps toward me and my friend was not here yet so I bolted to the next room where I ran right into my friend. When I found out it was him some fog came around us, and we could not see, until a hooded figure came and pulled us out, into a hallway with decapitated heads hanging from the wall.

When we got out of the hallway and saw a light and we thought that was the end, but it was not it was a hospital room where a guy was being sawed in two, which was kind of gross because you saw blood squirting all over the place. After the hospital we went in to a room where we heard chains and toward are left was a figure crawling toward us and we started talking to him about Xbox. Surprisingly he talked to us back, and after a while he said we should go before the next group comes. As we rounded the corner there was a big exit sign and as we ran too it someone bolted after us with a chainsaw, which freaked the living crap out of me and I ran right out of the house and saw my mom waiting for me. Hyperlinkwww.officially-dead.com/

Everyone has their own special hobbies, mine include: playing basketball, football, doing stunts on my bike, playing video games, vacationing, and pranking people. Basketball is my favorite sport and I like going up to the rec center with my friends, so we can play pick up games. Over the summer I like hosting tournaments of basketball at my house with my friends, like three on three tournaments, 21, and shooting contests.

I also like football because of the thrill you get when you catch the ball and interweave between your opponents with out them touching you. I know a lot of kids on the Churchill football teams, and they usually want to get a group of kids to play games in my huge backyard that is the size of a literal football field. The only thing I don't like about football is when someone lays you out twice your weight, because it hurts like hell if they hit you at point blank.

Performing stunts on my bike is a lot of fun and I like competing against one of my more experienced friends, because he can do some pretty sweet tricks. I sometimes do stuff that he can't do, but most of the time it takes me about two days to accomplish his tricks. One of my favorite things to do on my bike is stand up and ride with no handlebars because then I can stretch and not cramp, because of riding in the same position.

Video games, they are fun for about a half of an hour then you never want to play them again for a while. I have a PS3 right now and I like it a lot, as a blue ray player for my family's 50" TV. When I have nothing to do in the winter it is always nice to sit on the couch and talk with my friends via the mic you use to talk to people, instead of putting a bunch of money on the phone bill.

Another hobby I like to do is vacation whether it’s in or out of the United States. So far I have been almost to every state in the U.S. and have been out of the country many times. The countries I have gone too out of the United States are: Aruba, Cancun, Germany, Luxembourg, Jamaica, and Canada.

I love pulling pranks on people and my friends. Some of my more recent pranks are convincing some random kids at Stevenson that I am a Sophomore, and telling my friend that Faygo made a new pop called blue goo, which is a pretty long event, but that will be another story. I love pranking people on Halloween because it is one of the best times to prank people and this Halloween is going to be pretty fun.

One of the worst things that can happen to you in the middle of a firefight is having a gun that does not work. On July 13, 2008, a group of American soldiers got themselves into an intense firefight in Afghanistan and in the middle of it staff Sgt. Erich Phillip' s M4 carbine stopped firing along with most of his other soldiers. As a result 9 U.S. soldiers died and 27 wounded.

Historians have found out that have failed many times right when the soldier needs it. Since the U.S. is going to be in Iran for a while why doesn't someone replace these guns with a better replacement? Many people call the cheep AK 47 a piece of junk, but in battle it hasn't failed the soldiers who have been using it. I think the reason we don't give are soldiers cheaper guns that have basically the same capabilities is because the M4 looks more professional, and our soldiers would make America look like they are poor or something dumb like that if they were running around with AKs.

The main reason we are in Afghanistan is because we want to find Osama bin Laden, and keep control of the Taliban and Al'Queda. If we can do this cheaply then why don’t we so we can save a couple million dollars that would be put to getting something overly priced like an MP5 and handing each of our soldiers one? Another good thing about having the AK is that soldiers wont have to worry about ammo as much because that is the weapon most terrorists use and when we kill them we can pick up their ammo.

This does not really relate to my topic, but why is President Obama sending so many troops over in Iran, don’t we already have enough of them? There are still a lot of soldiers who like their M4s, but most of the have not been in intense combat. The M4 is a good gun but it is known to overheat after shooting it for a while, so why can’t we just replace it with a gun that is relatively the same but is not too good at far range shooting because it’s bullets spread out a lot if you hold down the trigger. Also a good way to get rid of all the M4s is sell them to one of our allies like Britain, or Israel, so we can get some money to put towards saving the economy.

Hyperlink-http://www.newser.com/story/71413/guns-failed-us-troops-in-afghan-firefight.html

Having days off is always fun and when I found out on 10/7/09 that we that school was closed, I was ecstatic. At first I did not know what to do and slept till one o'clock, after sleeping my dad wanted me to help him paint one of the hallways in my house. I was about to get up and help him but I fell back to sleep for another 45minutes and when I woke my dad was finished painting. I said I was sorry because I never helped him and he understood because I had woken up at five in the morning. It felt weird not having school and it was two o' clock in the afternoon. I did not know what to do because I was too lazy to go play football with one of my friends who is a sophomore Churchill, and my dad had already said that he would take me to play Basketball at the Rec center at around 6:30, but that was not until four more hours.

My final decision was to have no life and play on my PS3 for about an hour. When I was done playing Ps3 I looked to see what homework I had and was lucky enough to find out that I did not have any homework besides typing this blog. It was now 2:59 and I wanted to help my dad because I was not successful in helping him paint. He said that he needed help replacing a light in one of our cars because it had blew out suddenly. I did not do so well replacing the light because I do not know much about the insides of cars, but still was a reliable tool in my dad’s success in replacing the light.

I had forgot to say this, but before 3:00 my dad and I had to go to my old school, St. Edith to pick up my sister from school. I usually don’t go to pick my sister a lot because I usually take the bus, and get home around 2:50 and by then my dad or mom are already gone. The next three hours are pretty dry so I am going to skip to 6:30 when I am playing basketball at the community rec center. I had invited two of my friends to come, and we had fun playing pick up basketball until this group of men that looked around 25 or 30 completely owned us, with a finishing score of 11 to 5.

It was now 7:30 and we decided that since we only had a half of an hour left that we would go into the fitness center and go on a couple of the machines. One of my friends challenged me to a push up contest and I forget who won but once we got over 60 we were pretty tired and decided to forfeit the match. After we left the rec my mom dropped them off at their house and I went back to mine to play Ps3 with my same friends for about an hour then we decided to call it quits and I went upstairs, brushed my teeth, and went to bed.

First day memoir

Oatmeal and Pencils
By: Austin

“Time to get up!” My mom yelled from downstairs as I was peacefully sleeping. Maybe this is just a bad dream I said to myself, as I decided to roll over, and go back to bed. A couple of seconds later I heard it again and realized that I had to get up to go to school. I slowly got out of bed trying not to wake up my dog and went downstairs. As I was descending the stairs I smelt a putrid odor and I realized my mom had made oatmeal, which is the only thing I don’t like for breakfast. I kept on asking my mom if I could have something else for breakfast, but she said I had to eat my oatmeal. I swallowed the lumpy oatmeal as it slithered down my throat, hoping that each spoonful would be my last.

After I finished having oatmeal I headed upstairs to brush my teeth, and succeed in getting the disgusting flavor out of my mouth. Brushing my teeth seemed to be the best part of my morning so far and it made me feel more energetic and awake. When I went to my bedroom I did not know what to wear, I searched for a pair of shorts with pockets, which was like trying to find a needle in a haystack since I mostly have basketball shorts. When I finally stumbled across a decent pair of shorts I put them on and flew downstairs thinking I that I was late. I came to find out that it was only 6:30 a.m. and that I still had some time to spare, so I sat and wondered how school was going to be, wishing the best of luck to myself.

At about 6:40am my mom asked me if I was ready to go to school, and I mumbled a defeated, “yes mom.” As I headed outside I felt a shiver as a gust of wind blew and wished I had brought a sweatshirt, but I felt too lazy to go back inside and get one. As I sat next to my mom driving to school in the dark I was seriously contemplating sticking my head out of the window, pretending to puke, with a glimmer of hope that she would turn around and take me back home. Alas, she dropped me off in front of the school and said, “Have a great day, I love you!” I waved goodbye, turned towards the front steps of my new school, and said to myself, “Let’s do this”!

A-A is for the first letter in my name. I like my name because it is different, and I don’t know a lot of people who have my name.

B-B is for basketball, which is my favorite sport. I like basketball, and it is a fun sport to play.

C-C is for castles, which I have been to a couple, and really liked them. My favorite castle is Marksburg Castle in Germany.

D-D is for dogs, which I have two of. Their names are Charlie and Sadie.

E-E is for energetic which I am sometimes. Being energetic is sometimes a good thing and sometimes a bad thing, but I like this trait

F-F is for friends which I have many of. I like all of my friends and they are all nice to me

G-G is for good times which are always fun. Having good times is doing well in school, vacationing, and hanging out with friends.

H-H is for hanging out and I do that a lot. Hanging out is fun and I like hanging out with my family and friends.

I-I is for intelligent and I think I am pretty smart. I like school, and I have been having fun through the past weeks

J-J is for jumping skills and I think I can jump pretty high. Jumping helps me out in

K-K is for

L-L is for learning, which is what I do at school. Learning is vital for passing tests at school

M-M is for money, which I get from cutting the grass, and other various jobs. I like getting money so I can by guitars and different supplies and toys I like.

N-N is for narwhals because they are one of my favorite animals. Narwhals are a interesting species, and they look pretty cool with their horns on their heads.

O-O is for opportunities which I like having to help me in life. I like having opportunities because they help me.

P-P is for PS3, which is one of my favorite possessions. I like my PS3 because it is a lot more than a game system and it is a lot of fun to play with.

Q-Q is for Quagmire, which is a fictional character in Family Guy. He is pretty funny, and fun to watch

R-R is for riding my bike, which I like to ride and do tricks on. I can do a lot of cool tricks on my bike and I have a lot of fun riding it.

S-S is for songs and I like rap rock, and certain pop rock music. I like a lot of different songs and I have a lot of them on my Ipod.

T-T is for Truthful, which is another good trait that I have. Being truthful is a good trait and it makes a lot of people believe you.

U-U is for underwear, which I have many cool colored ones. I like wearing matching underwear with whatever clothes I am wearing.

V-V is for very cool sweatshirts that I have. I like my sweatshirts and I like their different designs.

W-W is for Water, which is kind of different, but it is one of my favorite drinks. Liking water is good because it is also healthy for you

X-X is for the X games, which are fun to watch. My favorite person to watch in the X games is Shaun white who is a good snowboarder.

Y-Y is for young, which I am because I am still 14 and am not, going to be 15 till the end of August

Z-Z is for Zealous because I am most of the time always happy. Being happy is a good trait and I like being happy

HIGH SCHOOL

My first day at Stevenson high school was a great experience. When I first walked in the school it seemed very big, and I felt confused even though I had been in Stevenson many times before. All of the classes I had were placed all over the school, and it felt like I had walked a mile by the end of the day. I only had one assignment to do by the end of the day from math, and I had to just answer a couple of review questions. I met a lot of friends that I knew from middle school, and a couple of juniors, and sophomores.

My favorite class was Global Ed history, because the teacher was funny, and it sounded like my class was going to have a lot of fun activities to do throughout the school year. My biology teacher, Mrs. Harb teaches only one class each school year, and I was lucky enough to get her class, she is also the head of the school senate, and she hosts all of the dances. My math teacher Mrs. Knehetchel is funny, and I like the way she makes us learn about each section.

English was interesting, and Mr. Fielder's way of teaching English will hopefully help me later in life with my different ways of writing. My favorite experience about school is lunch, and I like it when my dad pack's me lunch because I always get really good deserts. Gym is like resses so it is a lot of fun to play whatever sports the teacher decides we should do, and to work out in the fitness center. High school has had a lot of great events happen for me, and it will hopefully be like that for the rest of the four years I am going to be enrolled here.