My Spring Break Trip to Puerto Rico

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Have you ever been to Puerto Rico? For spring break that is where my family and I went. 

Our trip started in Old San Juan. We were only there for one night but what I remember most is the colonial architecture and the vibrant music and lights at night. In the morning, we went to the best breakfast spot ever which was called Choco Bar which had the best pancakes ever. Later in the morning, we went to Vieques, Puerto Rico which is a small island that is a part of Puerto Rico. The cool thing about going to Vieques was that we got to take a really small plane there.

When we got to Vieques we immediately explored all of the beaches. We went to five beaches in total. My favorite was called Punta Arenas which means sandy point. It was great for snorkeling and seeing the reefs. My family also enjoyed hanging out in the pool and watching beautiful sunsets.

We went to many different places to eat but my favorite place was called The Mango Restaurant. This place served many different foods. This place also had the best service ever. (Shout out to Joe!) We also enjoyed seeing wild horses everywhere. Right before we left Vieques there was this tour called a bioluminescent bay tour. We all went at night and got on a kayak and when we paddled the light lit up into this truly amazing blue green color when we touched the water. The stars were also incredible. If you ever go to Puerto Rico, I highly recommend doing this! 

Thank you all so much for reading today! In the comments tell me your favorite places you’ve been. Thank you!

Here are some more photos

My Experience Planting Trees With Keep Durham Beautiful

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Just a few days ago, my grade and I planted trees to help Keep Durham Beautiful. Have you ever done anything like this?

The day started like any other day, except we were about to get on the buses. Where were we going, you may ask? Well, we were going to plant some trees in Durham. We planted over ninety trees in all because each student had one. We each got to choose what type of tree we could, so I eventually decided on an Eastern Red Cedar tree. My friends and I had a great time learning how to plant trees.

It took us fifteen minutes to get to and from the place where we were planting trees. We took a bus, which was fun because my friends and I were waving at other drivers, and we got five different trucks to honk their horns at us. 

Later, we were forced to watch an hour-long movie about trees in German. As you may assume, we did not have the best time watching this movie, but at least there were subtitles. Even though the movie was boring, we learned a few things. For example, we learned that trees can hurt when some animals bite on their leaves, so the trees send out perfume to all of the wildlife that tells them to make these animals stop eating the trees’ leaves. 

At the end of all the movies and tree planting, we reflected on everything that had happened and shared what we would like to do to help the environment with trees. My goal was to have more diversity among trees, so I wished we could have more Palm Trees in North Carolina. 

 In the comments, tell me your favorite type of tree. Thank you for reading today!



My Favorite Foods to Make and Places to Eat

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Thank you Unsplash for this photo

 

Is there anywhere you like to eat? Any foods you like to eat? Today I will talk about my favorite foods and my favorite places to eat.

I’ll start off by talking about my favorite places to eat and add some recommendations. My first and favorite recommendation is a Mexican restaurant called La Vaquita. This place is known for its very authentic Mexican food and my favorite queso birrias which is a taco that contains beef, cheese, optional lime, sometimes chiles, and the consomme sauce which I love pouring on my queso birrias.

Next, is my favorite American food restaurant, Town Hall Burger. Now you may be asking why I love this place so much. I love it because it has everything I love, which is TVs with only sports on, burgers, tenders, lots of drinks, places to sit with my family, and Shuffleboard. I highly recommend this place if you want good food and lots of sports TVs.

The last place I will talk about is Top of the Hill which if you didn’t know is in the middle of the UNC campus. Go Heels! It serves all kinds of foods from ribs to all kinds of sandwiches and salads. What is so cool about this place is that you get to eat on the top deck and overlook the UNC campus while eating.

One of my favorites is Enchiladas which can be made with pork or chicken as the main ingredient. This is one of the meals my family and I make on Christmas Eve which is or Mexican dinner where we get tamales and all kinds of authentic Mexican food. Because of my Mexican heritage we always know where to go and how to make the best Mexican food.

The next recipe I will talk about is quesadillas. Now I know you may be saying I already know how to make quesadillas well I wanted to share the way I make them. I start by using flour tortillas and Mexican cheese. I eventually butter the quesadillas with a butter stick on both sides and then I like to put cheese and pepperoni inside the tortilla while heating the tortilla on the pan. In the end, an amazing pepperoni cheese quesadilla to eat.

The final recipe is called peppermint double chocolate chip brownies. This is a recipe me and my sister love making especially during the holidays. My favorite part is the minty peppermint on top of the chocolate brownies. This is probably one of the most popular recipes in the Smith household because it is easy to make and all you need is brownie mix and mashed candy canes on top of the brownies. They are also amazing!

Thank you for reading today and I hope you found some great places to eat and some great recipes. In the comments tell me your favorite places to eat and your favorite recipes. Thank you so much for reading have a great day!

 

My Opinions On Music

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Hello again! Today I will be talking about why music is so important to me.

I’m going to start off by talking about my favorite type of music, Country. When I was five I heard this song called Simple by Florida Georgia Line (highly recommended!), my favorite song at the time. Either way I loved this song and listened to it way too much and wanted to hear more of that music. So I started listening to Thomas Rhett and loved his music so much! He was my happy spot during Covid to listen to. That led me to my first concert which was to see none other than Thomas Rhett when I was in fourth grade which was amazing! I then got into Eric Church who I highly recommend if you like a rock country vibe. I saw him in concert twice, the first time being in 2022 which was the best concert I’ve ever seen! He was indoors so that made the atmosphere feel even more amazing. He sang for three hours straight! Then I went to my second concert to see him this fall which was great but not as electric as the first concert.

There are some other artists I love like Jordan Davis and Sam Hunt, both of whom I am listening to the most right now. Jordan Davis and Sam Hunt both have a feel good up beat pop country mix which I love. Some of my favorite songs by Jordan Davis are Next Thing You Know, What My World Spins Around, Fishing Spot, and Buy Dirt featuring Luke Bryan (who is also great!). Some songs that I like from Sam Hunt are House Party, Outskirts, Body Like a Backroad, and Saturday Night. 

I have also liked other music, for example rap and hip hop. I’m not really interested in new rap nowadays but I love hip hop and rap from the 90s and 2000s. It helps get ready and hyped before my baseball games. Even though I listen to less of this music now it is very catchy. Some of my favorite artists are Dr. Dre, Eminem, Tupac, and The Notorious B.I.G. WARNING this music contains explicit content not PG. 

Even though I have only talked about country and hip hop/rap every now and then I enjoy listening to other music like rock. I enjoy mostly older rock like AC/DC. This helps hype me up before my baseball games also. When I was young I would say I hate pop and I did for a while but over time I listened to more pop and now I enjoy a lot more. I now enjoy Taylor Swift, Shakira, Justin Timberlake, and Bruno Mars partly because most of the music is upbeat and makes me feel good.

I hope this blog post helped you get some great suggestions for songs and different artists. In the comments, tell me some of your favorite songs and artists. Thank You!




A Trip to Tennessee My Baseball Tournament

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Special shout out to Unsplash for this image

Have you ever been to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee? Well, I just went to the coolest baseball tournament ever.

In late October, I went to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. On Friday, we went to the amusement park Dollywood which is a park named after country music legend Dolly Parton. The park was awesome. I went with some of my baseball teammates on all the rides together and all the hype I heard about the park was true. There are no words I can use to describe the park because it was so awesome! Then on Saturday my baseball teammates and I had some breakfast and had a little practice in the cages. We found out that our hotel had water slides in it, so we went about three times the whole weekend for wayyy too long. It was awesome! Later on Saturday we went to this great lunch spot. It had arcade games where you could win raffle tickets to get prizes.

After we finished lunch, it was time for our game. We were getting ready and our first game was at 5:30 at a field called Fluor Field. It is a replica of the Boston Red Sox Stadium which is called Fenway Park a very famous baseball field. Sadly though we lost the first game 8:5. It was pretty boring so I didn’t want to explain the game. We were going to our second game at a field called Camden Yards named after the Baltimore Orioles stadium. Now it was a little intimidating because it’s a big field, but that didn’t stop us from scoring 11 runs in a thriller! We were in the the fourth inning and we were down 9 – 2, not so good right? Well, that just motivated us more to put more runs on the scoreboard. We took the lead 11 – 9 in the fifth inning and we held the other team and didn’t let them score. Now I know what you’re probably thinking, we’ll win this thing in the last inning. But in order for us to do that we had to put this game away which means we had to score runs. We had a chance with a runner in scoring position (which means a runner is on second or third base) with two outs and then we get out. Okay, so now all we need to do now is hold them, let them score 1 run or fewer and we let them tie the game but we get all three outs which means extra innings right? NOPE! Where we were playing, the rules stated that the game ends after 6 innings. To be fair, it was 10:00pm so it was late but still a tie, yeah not ideal but we played our absolute best and came back after being down. That’s a win in my book. The next day we had an early game. Maybe not so great because we went to bed at about midnight because we were playing hide and seek in the hotel and watching the World Series game one where the Texas Rangers won on a walk off home run. It was awesome!

We wake up in the morning and have some delicious breakfast. We have to pack the cars and go right away for our first game. It’s 7:00 am and we’re feeling good. The game is about to start. We’re ready even though we’re playing a team that won both of its games the day before. The game starts and were looking good. The fifth inning comes and we explode with a ton of runs. Even though they scored a little they knew they were done. One of our pitchers comes in at the bottom of the sixth inning and seals it. Final score Durham Blues nine other team five and that was the final game of the weekend. We’re all so happy and celebrating, and then suddenly we have to say goodbye to everyone. Right before we left there was no way we could leave without going to the gift shop. My dad and I took a look around for a little while and eventually came to an agreement on two things, a hat and a beanie. So basically two different style hats. My mom, grandma, and sister were all going home and my dad and I were taking off. While talking about this whole tournament experience and how much fun we had. Then later in the drive we start listening to this new podcast called  New Heights with Jason and Travis Kelce while having the best five and a half hour car ride home I’ve ever had. That’s because it’s the only one I’ve ever had! That about wraps it up. Hope you have a great day!







 

Blinded by Greed Comic Behind the Scenes

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Do you like drawing comics well? I thought I didn’t until now. A couple of months ago our Language Arts teacher told us we would be reading some wisdom tales and after each wisdom tale we would write a moral and a summary. We did that for all 20 wisdom tales and at the end of all those wisdom tales we had to choose one to make a comic about. I chose a story called Blinded by Greed from China. The story Blinded by Greed is about how one day there was a thief who tried to steal gold from a merchant with a big crowd watching. Well, that didn’t go so well. Eventually the thief got caught by a cop and was put in jail. Later the cop asked, “Why did you steal all that gold with the big crowd watching?” and the thief replied and said, “I was blinded by the greed, when I reached to steal the gold that was all I saw.” So the moral of the story is: Think before you act. So I wrote a comic about that story except with my drawing which is probably a setback to the picture you had in your mind while reading the story but it’s still something.

The reason I chose this story was because I thought that moral is so important. There are times where you don’t realize the outcome about you doing something and you don’t realize how it could affect you because there are times and I know I’ve done this before where just don’t realize the outcome. The reason we were drawing comics is because one day a someone named Brittain Peck taught us about comics and how it doesn’t need to be fancy and how it could just be simple. That helped me a lot when writing and drawing. I hope this blog post inspires you to do something like whether it’s a wisdom tale, a poem, and even a book.

Planking at School? Push Your Body to New Limits

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Thank you Unsplash for the image

 

On the 25th of October my 6th grade Language Arts class started planking. Now I know what you’re thinking, planking in Language Arts, no way. Well, it’s true. We started out with 30 seconds and every day and every week we would add 15 seconds and keep going and going. As James Clear said in his book Atomic Habits, “Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress.” What that means is you can set a goal but you may not do that goal so making it a system makes it a habit which we did every day.

So the day came for the plank challenge and right now I’m thinking no way I’m getting past five minutes. Then I realize we can listen to music, thank goodness. Okay, so we’re on the ground ready to get started. We start planking and my music turns on. I completely zone out and I don’t have a timer because that doesn’t help me, so I just listen and listen until about the fifteen minute mark. Then I start realizing I have to start locking in, so about eight minutes later I am sweating the most I’ve ever sweated in school. I’m exhausted I want to give up, but I just can’t. So three minutes later me and one person were left. The period was almost over so we called it a tie ~ twenty seven minutes of straight up planking. The next day,  I felt cramps and was sore but it was worth it. I pushed my body to a limit that I thought I couldn’t go. Will you push your body to new limits?

Why Do You Read?

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Image from Unsplash

I own more than 500 books at my house and I like reading. I have always enjoyed reading and I never haven’t. I am currently reading Swing Kings by Jared Diamond. This is a great book to read if you like baseball or you are interested in how baseball players started to hit home runs or even if you like science, you would most likely love this book like me. I have no idea how many books I’ve read in my life but my favorite would be Cheated by Andy Martino. It was a great and compelling book talking about all the cheating scandals in baseball history, even some scandals people didn’t even know about. 

Now I have some favorite authors. My favorite is Dan Gutman. Dan Gutman writes all of these books about baseball card adventures and I love those books. They talk about science fiction but also a little history. They are so good! I have a lot of different genres that I read. Out of all the genres my favorite is historical fiction. Why, I don’t know who doesn’t  love a little history! And some  made up things that is why I loved the book series Magic Tree House by Mary Pope Osborne. As a kid, this was all I read in my early lower school years. I remember when I was in first grade reading Magic Tree House and I  saw the word ‘absolutely’ and I said the word and it made me so happy and so amazed that I pronounced it. 

Now choosing a book is like choosing a song. Hmm I have never read this book, should I try it so you try it and you love it. At least that is how choosing a book is like for me. In the comments, tell me some recommendations for books I should read or any books that you like.

Window and Mirror books Hatchet By Gary Paulsen

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Hatchet by Gary Paulsen

Windows and mirrors today in this book review. I will tell you whether this book was a window or mirror for me. First, window and mirror books are this. A window book is something you don’t really relate to or do and a mirror book is something you’re around or or do. Now this book Hatchet was great. I loved it even though there were things I don’t really relate to but it was still great. The book was definitely a window for me. I don’t usually do adventure books but this one was definitely worth it.