Family Circle

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Thank You,
David Xie

Yesterday was the first day of the new school year! With new friends and teachers as well as old friends from years before, this year is one that I am sure will be filled with more fun and more challenges.

Before class, I met with many of my friends on the way to their classes. We shared our schedules, and compared our classes. Though some had almost identical teachers and classes, some were remotely different than my schedule. I also chatted to them about our wonderful summer vacations. While they explained their cruise to Alaska or their backpacking trip to Oregon, I talked about camping on Mt. Diablo and the wonderful Grandparents that I have who was coming for a couple months from China. It was one of those times when you wish that you were them, yet you know that they are wishing it to you as well.

Then, as the bell rung and school started, I saw more and more friends. During each class, I saw friends from fifth, sixth, and even a new friend that I had acquainted on that day. Meeting teachers was fun too. I first had Core (English+Social Studies) with Mrs. Linton. Everyone said that she was a real pain in the neck, and but I thought that she was okay, just a little outward. She would meet everyone at the beginning of the day with a super smile, showing every single one of her pearly whites. Then after introducing herself, she let us work together in small groups to create a political map of the world to get to know each other better. After laughs and lots of trying out different continent positions, the Five Minute Bell rang and I packed up, walking out the door.

My Science teacher was considered “The Pain” by almost everyone I had met. In fact the first bunch of words that rolled off her tounge when she approached the classroom was, “Get on the Wall and line up QUIETLY right NOW!!” She had such a loud voice! And while she murmured to herself while everyone filed in to the class along the back wall as she had ordered, I got a worse and worse impression of her. She gave a very long speech explaining how she was naturally LOUD and how she was going to be a little bit more STRICT than the other teachers, but I still felt that she might be a little better along the year. Anyways, a class of thirty could be a pretty hard time for one teacher.

Pre-algebra 7 was great though, an awesome ending to an awesome day. My teacher was Mrs. Torkelson, very fun and super nice. She explained the class, and appeared to be a prolific artist, with great stick-figures to entertain us during the extra time that the class gave. With a couple of laughs and a great deal of clapping, I left WCI with a very good feeling.

WCI will always be a place fo effort and challenge, though also fun and entertaining. I will strive to be my best and BE AWESOME!

In my house, there lies a 20-gallon fishtank. And in the 20-gallon fishtank there lives three fishies. Yay fishies! As the fish flip and turn and actively swim, three humans walk near the fishtank.
A small female says: “Hi, Golfish Fireball! He’s so cute, isn’t he, David?”
A medium-sized male, David, responds, “I think the Koi, Tiger, is cuter.”
Then, the large female says: “Emily, David, they are all cute, both the Goldfish Fireball, the Goldfish Sunset, and the Koi Tiger are all cute. Now, it is time to feed them!”

Little flakes fall from a hand, and the fish spring into action. Fireball and Sunset swim immediately to the top of the tank, as Tiger stays on the floor, a natural bottom-feeder.
“Wow, I still think that the bold solid orange of Fireball is beautiful!”, says Emily.
“But Tiger’s kaledioscope of gold, black, yellow and orange is truly amazing!”, says David.
“What’s kaledio-”
“Everybody! Stop fighting! The bold orange of Fireball, and the Half-and-half orange and white of Sunset, and the colors of Tiger are all equally lustrous!” says the Large Female Human, Mom.

“Do you remember when we bought our fish? We almost couldn’t buy Tiger because the salesman insisted that Koi are for ponds! Of course, we’ll be feeding it to the cat as food if like that!”
“But why?”
“Do you know how big they will be when they grow up? A foot, at least! They won’t even have turning space!”
“Well, okay. Because I was thinking of having a tank full of goldfish. Maybe not.”

“It’s time to go swimming, so peel your eyes of the fish and put them on the equipment!”

As the humans walk away, the fish let out a deep sigh, and once again, take out the balloons, stereo, and confetti to resume their party.

A funny little email that someone sent to me:

We’ll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes,
But the plural of ox becomes oxen, not oxes.
One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese,
Yet the plural of moose should never be meese.
You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice,
Yet the plural of house is houses, not hice.
If the plural of man is always called men,
Then shouldn’t the plural of pan be called pen?
If I speak of my foot and show you my feet,
And I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?
If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth,
Why shouldn’t the plural of booth be called beeth?
Then one may be that, and three would be those,
Yet hat in the plural would never be hose,
And the plural of cat is cats, not cose.
We speak of a brother and also of brethren,
But though we say mother, we never say methren.
Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him,
But imagine the feminine: she, shis and shim!
Let’s face it - English is a crazy language.
There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger;
neither apple nor pine in pineapple.
English muffins weren’t invented in England.
We take English for granted, but if we explore its paradoxes,
we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square,
and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.
And why is it that writers write but fingers don’t fing,
grocers don’t groce and hammers don’t ham?
Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend.
If you have a bunch of odds and ends
and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?
If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught?
If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?
Sometimes I think all the folks who grew up speaking English
should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane.
In what other language do people recite at a play and play at a recital?
We ship by truck but send cargo by ship.
We have noses that run and feet that smell.
We park in a driveway and drive in a parkway.
And how can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same,
while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?
You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language
in which your house can burn up as it burns down,
in which you fill in a form by filling it out,
and in which an alarm goes off by going on.
And, in closing, if Father is Pop, how come Mother’s not Mop?

Please read why swearing is bad and leave a comment saying if you did what the article asked of you.

Don’t worry, I promise if you say you didn’t I will still not hold it against you. I am certainly not trying to offend your beliefs.

I am finally 12 years old! After many months (12, to be exact) of being 11 years old and undergoing many ridiculations of people who stood tall above me, I now have the ability to grow into the 12-year-old stature and become a likeness of those who once I considered giants. And while they grow taller, as I, I will eat and exersize and sleep and do anything it takes to grow taller and bigger and stronger than those heedless monsteres towering above. Beware!

And certainly the wisdom and knowledge. With age comes wisdom, so I must be sure to read and learn and let my brain GROW and GROW just as fast as my body, so I will alter the annoying A-
’s and make them A’s. To do that, I must listen to the teacher and learn the homework and do whatever I can do, use my highest effort.

The particular day was important, too, because I only get have them for (1/365.25) of my life, and this one was quite a bit more special, mainly because of the fact that my grandparents came from all the way to CHINA to witness it. They added quite a punch to the spectacular day. I also watched a fantastic movie, one that attracted even more people than Harry Potter, G-FORCE. IT was a very happy and laughable day and the story will stay on this blog until the blog is closed, which I hope won’t ever be.

Stamford is a unique town with all traditions kept intact. It is regarded as “the finest stone town in England”, where almost all of its buildings were built with stones.

The bridge leading to Stamford, with St Mary’s church greeting visitors.

The town is so small that one can easily walk around, along the narrow stone/brick roads. A small river flows by the south of the town, and on the other side of town, lies expansive town meadow where kids are running and playing. From the town meadow, you can see the Stamford Skyline with 5 churches (St. Mary’s, St. George’s, All Saints, St. Martin’s and St. John’s), not very tall, but outstanding among the other ancient stone buildings.

The famous estate around Stamford is the Burghley House, which is just outside the town across the river.

In the background, that is what privileged people call a house!

It was Lord Burghley’s house, a really grand 16th-century English country house, an Elizabethan architecture. Many movies were filmed there, such as “Da Vinci Code”, “Pride & Prejudice” and “Elizabeth The Golden Age”. The Burghley park is so large that the palace would look small if you take a long walk in the park. I guess the Burgley house/park is even larger than the entire Stamford town. Burghley family was the dominant political family in Stamford for 400-500 years, so practically speaking, the family owned everything there.

In the Burghley park, there is an area for herds of deers, maybe thousands of deers. Not sure if that was the hunting ground for the Royal or Noble families. I took several photos of close-up on deers.

The deers in the Burghley’s backyard.

I will post some photos of the Stamford town and Burghley House soon.

As the second session of Photoshop starts, now Level Two, I learn more and more. This time, they teach mostly masks and clippings, and I am amazed at the great amount of knowledge I have amassed during the class. The class was taught by the same teacher, same Final, and same grading. The students were different, though, as most were ones that weren’t in the first class.

For my final, I took pictures of fruits and added parts of the future counterparts, like tomatoes and ketchup. To make them blend better, I used layer masking using brushes and vector masking using a pen, to cover us some parts to make the images look believable. It was a very challenging, but fun process of putting together the images.

Tomatoes and Ketchup

Grapes and Wine

Apples and Pie

The article was written on July 18, the day I arrived in UK. Just get a chance to post it here now.

Finally all settled down and ready to rest. If I did not ask for the GPS (they charged me additional cost of $300 for 2 weeks), I would be probably still in the middle of wheat field somewhere right now. I still have no idea how I got here, I studied the maps so carefully but no use at all, because all the roads look the same at country side, and you do not see the sign. Most of intersections do not have signals or stop sign, they use “roundabout”, driving in circle at left side to cross or turn at the intersection. After about 10 such “roundabout”, I completely missed the direction and location. So I completely rely on the GPS, but the problem is that GPS kept saying it is going to run out of power and would shut down soon (due to loose charge contact). Once I had to pull over to a side path, but looking one direction, there is nothing but wheat field; looking another direction, there are some trees and wheat field. Really have no idea how to proceed, but have to figure out how to recharge the GPS.

Seems that most people in UK drive manual car. I booked an automatic car, but Hertz could not find one in its lot; and so they asked me if I can drive manual car. I said I can drive manual car, but do I sit at the left or right side in the car? After knowing that people sit at right side, and use left hand to do the shifting, I insisted that I need an automatic car. After waiting for half hour, they finally find a Mercedes which has automatic shift (free upgrade).

Driving at left side is awkward at local, because the center divide line is just one simple dash-line (so you feel it is two lane one-direction road), and you are intimated by the cars coming to you in other direction at your right side; and the intersection is roundabout which extending various roads in different random angles. I thought it would be easier on freeway. But when I got to the free way with speed went up, I immediately felt that I could not go straight line. Because sitting at the right side, and your tendency always drifts toward left side to cross into left lane, because we got used to feel driver should be at center-to-left in the lane. I had to force myself to position at “center-to-right”, but just could not judge my lane position; much like first time went on freeway. And when you check the cars behind, you would naturally look at rear mirror at up-right, and you see nothing (you have to look at the other way).

Another problem with country side, is that the hotel address does not have street number. So I could just input the street name into GPS, and when it said “You’ve arrived”, and I was at the middle of a long road inside woods. Then I searched nearby hotels in the GPS, and it did not have Holiday Inn. I found a familiar hotel “Hilton” on the list, because all other hotels having strange names. I guess the Countryman must be confused with the two American big hotel names, so I followed GPS to Hilton, and it is really Holiday Inn.

The weather was fine, mostly sunshine with clouds, and once a while heavy shower. When it was pouring, you can not really see clearly; most people would pull cars into a gas station to wait the shower over.

The food at Hotel was expensive and very little; the service was even worse - they did not hand you a menu (you have to grab one yourself), and I was drinking ice water for half hour, before I could see/stop a waiter to put an order. They (just one waiter and one waitress) just disappeared . When I finished my meal, I waited half hour again for the bill, and still did not see them. So I just walked out the restaurant, the waiter finally showed up at the door. How much tip would you give? Sounds like the people and situations in the Catch-22.

Anyway, quite an advanture.

Updates:
The English country is tranquil and tidy. Here is a photo of a tiny Rockingham village.

As the Sixth Grade passes and the Summer is almost done, I recollect on the various experiences during the passed school year. I had grown greatly both physically and mentally.

In this year Physically, I lost three teeth, grew 1.5 inches, and went up a shoe size. I started wearing glasses (-2.00) got a :33 on my 50 yard freestyle, and started trying to ride my bike hands-free.

School-wise, I got 20 A’s and 4 A-’s , read lots of books like the “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” and “The Guardians of Ga’Hoole” series, and met lots of new teachers. I saw friends for 5th grade and made lots of new friends. And in PE, I drapped from a 9:20 to a 7:09 in my mile runs.

In music, I made the Jazz Band on piano in my school by auditioning, and played Alto Sax in the 6th grade band. I went up one level in the Certificate of Merit testings, and attended Branch Honors, a recital for students who did exceptionally well in the CM tests. I also learned two more dances from Bach’s English Suite III.

This year has been a hotspot for growth, with gains physically, school-wise, and musically.With these advances, I have a feeling that 7th grade will be even better!

Go David!!