Day 3 in Texas

Texas day 3

Today was Thursday, and my third day in Texas. This was a very quick trip to Texas, and we are leaving tomorrow (Friday), but I think my family and I made the most out of it. Today, my mom left early to go to her conference, so my brother, dad, and I went to the IHOP at the mall. I got chicken and waffles which is one of my favorite breakfasts. After breakfast, we came back to the hotel for a little while, and then we tried to go to a place called SegCity, to try to get a small tour of San Antonio on Segways. We got this idea because yesterday at the Tower of the Americas, we saw some people taking a tour on Segways, so we wanted to do that. Unfortunately, I didn't weigh enough to ride a Segway, so we couldn't do that, and I was disappointed.

 Next, we went to a store that was selling all San Antonio shirts, sweatshirts, and some little gadgets that said San Antonio on them. I got a peach colored short sleeved shirt that said San Antonio, Texas on it, and has the Alamo on the shirt. Then because my brother wanted to get a shirt that had something about the Dallas Cowboys on it, we went to the Cowboys proshop and he bought a shirt that had a Tight End player on it. Don't ask me why he wanted a Dallas Cowboys shirt, we are hardcore New England Patriots fans, in fact, he was actually wearing a Patriots shirt when we were in the Cowboys proshop.

 I knew that I wanted to try to go on a bike ride while I was here in Texas, so after we bought the shirts, we went back to the hotel, and my brother stayed there with my mom, and my dad and I went to a bike shop called Blue Star bike shop. I really recommend it if you ever are in San Antonio and are looking to rent bikes. We got the bikes, and stated the bike trail. It was a terrific bike trail, also with spectacular views. We were alongside a river the whole time, and it was awesome. There was a full on waterfall at one point on the trail. It was BEAUTIFUL. I really enjoyed the bikes we were given, and they were very fast. We spent just over an hour each way on the trail, and when were were done, the lady at the bike shop told us we went 12 miles each way, so we went 24 miles round trip!! My dad and I only thought we went like 8 or 9 miles each way. It was a very scenic route, and it was breathtaking. finally, after biking, we came back to the hotel, and relaxed for a while, and then went out to a restaurant called La Tuna Grill.

 It was pretty much a hole in the wall place, but the food was amazing! They are famous for their outstanding cheesy burger, and fish tacos, but I got fries and chicken tenders. Our waiter was very funny and nice. We took an Uber back to the hotel, where we picked my brother up from the hotel and went to the mall. He really wanted to go back to the massage chairs at the mall, so that's where we headed. For 5 dollars, he was in the massage chair for 31 minutes, and for 2 dollars I went in for 10 minutes. After my 10 minutes was up, my dad and I went to Ghiradelli, and I got cookies 'n' cream in a cake cone. After that we picked up my brother and left.

                                           Well, that concludes my San Antonio, Texas trip, and I would just like to thank my mom for letting us come with her and working hard to have this opportunity! 

Day 2 in Texas

Texas day 2

Today, (Wednesday) was my second day in Texas. I went to the pool at our hotel last night for a swim, and it was so cool and colorful. There was different colored lights in the pool, and it was also a heated outdoor pool. The view was spectacular. But this morning, my mom left early to go to a conference, so the rest of my family and I walked to Denny's for breakfast. I had these sticky bun pancakes that were SO GOOD. It was two fluffy pancakes stacked on top of each other, that were glazed and had some sort of brown sticky thing on it. It was basically if you took pancakes and a cinnamon bun and cooked them together. They were the best. After that, we walked back to the hotel, and took a little break. After, we went to go see a 48 minute movie about the Alamo, and how it came to be today. It was very informational and detailed, except I was covering my ears for a lot of it, because the volume was very loud, and most of the movie was gun fires, and cannons. Once the movie was over, we went to the actual Alamo. There were lots of landmarks to look at and see, and the Alamo looked exactly like it did in the movie in terms of like the walls and ceilings.There were lots of landmarks, Soon, we went to the Tower of the Americas. If you don't know what the Tower of the Americas is, it is a 750 foot observation tower, also with a restaurant inside. Also, very slowly it turns in a circle while you are up there. I can see the tower from my hotel window, and I always see elevators going up and down. It doesn't take very long to get up there. We took lots of pictures and videos there. What was cool was that you could go outside, so that it would just be a glass window in front of you, and you could see like everything. The view was extraordinary. Next, we wanted to do something fun before we went to dinner- we contemplated either going to Six flags the next day or trying to go on a Segway Tour a that time. The times didn't work out for the Segway tour, so we think we are going to try to go tomorrow instead of Six flags. I remembered that there was a Dave and Busters down the street at the mall right off the Riverwalk. So, we walked there and spent around an hour at the arcade. It has so many arcade games. My brother spent the whole time playing a game called Crossy Road, and racked up over 3000 tickets. I decided to give some new games a try, but on some games I played it didn't even give me any tickets, so that was cheap because even if I did good on the game, I wouldn't get any tickets. I got just over 1000 tickets, but i wasn't mad that I didn't get very many tickets because I knew I had to get something small, because we are flying back on Friday so it would have to not really impact my room in my suitcase. I got 3 small packs of Haribo gummy bears, and pink LED light pulse earbuds that by the pulse of the music you are listening to, the LED lights go up and down the sides of the earbuds. I also went to a dinner tonight. We went to a barbecue place and got some really yummy ribs. I really recommend this place.

----------------stay tuned for texas day 3!

Day 1 in Texas

Texas Day 1

On Tuesday morning, my family and I left Massachusetts at 4:30 AM, to fly to San Antonio, Texas. My mom has this conference here, so we decided to make a little family vacation out of it. I will try to blog as much as I can while I'm here. Our flight left Boston at around 6:20 am, and then we flew to Chicago, and then we flew to San Antonio. I have never been to Texas, so I think this will be a great trip. We finally got to Texas at around noon time. The hotel we are staying at is right by the Riverwalk. The San Antonio Riverwalk is a network of walkways along the banks of the San Antonio river. My whole family was starving when we left the airport, so we knew the first thing we had to do was get a bite to eat. We ended up going to a Mexican restaurant. It took us a while to get there because we didn't really know where we were going, so we took some wrong turns. I was so tired and my legs were aching. Right after we ate, we went back to our hotel, and took a rest for a couple hours. After that, I wanted to go back to the Riverwalk. This time I went with my dad and my brother, and we went a lot farther than we did to get to the Mexican restaurant. A ton of boat tours passed us along the river. We plan on doing that on one of the next few days. I played a lot of Pokémon Go, and caught a ton of new Pokémon. It was so beautiful and scenic on the Riverwalk, with a variety of plants and nature. But I'd say we got a pretty good workout in because it is 6 o clock, and I have 16,000 steps.
 ---------- stay tuned for more blogs while I'm here in Texas

HONK Festival

HONK FESTIVAL- SATURDAY

On Saturday I went to a festival called Honk in Somerville. Honk is a festival of activist street bands, and it is truly a great time, where you can dance and sing along to all kinds of music. Honk is a three day festival, and my dad and I went on Saturday. We took the train and subway to Davis Square. There were tons of people there. First we went to a food truck called RedBones. RedBones is known for their delicious ribs. It is a tradition that every Honk fest, my dad and I eat some ribs from RedBones. They were SO good!! After we finished the ribs, J.P. Licks caught my eye, and I knew instantly that I just HAD to get ice cream. I got peanut butter cookies 'n' cream.

We had planned that my music teacher would be meeting us at Honk, because SHE also goes every year too and lives in Somerville. When we met up with her, we looked at shirts, talked, and took some pictures. It was really fun to see her there.

After a little while, she went off with her friends, and we went with my dad and his friend Greg.

We went to his son Charlie's bake sale he was holding down the street. Everything was whatever price you think was fair. He got a lot of business, and had 5 choices, but sold out of some of the treats quickly. I got 2 peanut butter cookies that had a Hershey kiss in the middle.

Once Charlie had basically sold out of everything, they packed up his stuff, and carried it home, while Greg my dad and I went to go watch a Brazilian drumming band. It was amazing how they could just keep drumming nonstop for like 5 minutes at a time. Their hands and fingers must have to be very strong in order to do that. Next, while they were still drumming, I decided to go on Pokemon Go (because duh :)), because I thought there might be some good Pokemon around because it was such a big event.

My dad told Greg where we were going, and he said that the best place for Pokemon was the park down the street where there was also a band playing. Turns out that all 4 pokestops at the park had a lure at them. A lure is when Pokemon spawn quickly around you, and makes more Pokemon appear. Usually there wouldn't be as many Pokemon, but there was a lure at all 4 pokestops. IT WAS AWESOME!! And lures aren't that popular, and they are hard to get too. However, I had to stop playing because it was using up a lot of my battery.

Then, we went to a plaza where there was a huge band from Detroit that was playing, and I saw my music teacher again! She and I squeezed through everyone and the tight spaces. Finally, we got to the front row! This band was my favorite out of all of the bands I watched. Something I liked about the band was that some of the songs they were playing were pop songs, so I really enjoyed that.

When the band was done we walked to Greg's friend's house, which was where the float was that they had made for the parade on Sunday. Ill import a picture at the end. A group of people (including me) brought the float down to a park so it would be ready for the parade. The motor for the float was human powered- 2 people were pushing it, 1 on each side, and there were 2 bikes at the back. I was actually on one of the bikes, and right when I had started to bike, the tire popped and was flat!

I still biked because it wasn't that bad, but i had to get off a few minutes later because I had to leave, and the actual tire was peeling off the rim, so it was becoming unsafe. Honk 2016 was extraordinary! I didn't want to leave.

POKEMON GO!

So, I have recently discovered my new obsession. Its an app called pokemon go. In case you don't know what it is, its an app that uses a GPS on your phone and you just walk or drive around and pokemon pop up and the pokemon appears on a camera on the phone, (so it looks like its in real life) and you use pokeballs (balls that you throw at them) to catch them. Iv'e spent numerous amount of time playing this game because it is so fun! The only bad part about is that it uses your battery quickly, partly because you are using GPS signal, and I also had to stop playing it for a month because it was using too much data, (even though most of it was on my brother's phone). So right now I'm on level 10. Also, a lot of my neighbors play Pokemon Go, so sometimes we go out on walks throughout the town.

 In the game there are landmarks all through your town, and anywhere you go that are called Pokestops. You spin something that looks like a coin with a picture of the monument, and you receive different things that help you, or that you can use for the better. Some things are: Pokeballs, Razz berries, eggs, egg incubators, incense, potions and revives. You can put egg incubators on the eggs, and then it tells you the amount of kilometers you have to walk in order for your eggs to hatch. When your eggs hatch you usually get a rare pokemon. Once i got a Pikachu! Razz berries are helpful when you are trying to catch a really good pokemon and it keeps breaking out of its shell, or it keeps moving and its hard to throw it at the right place. If you throw a razz berry at it, it makes it easier to catch. whenever you catch a pokemon, you get 2 or 3 candies for the the pokemon, and when you get enough candies, you can evolve that pokemon! For most pokemon, you need 50 pieces of candy. Surprisingly, it doesn't take a lot of time to get that many. Also, if you get a pokemon that's CP Isn't that much (like 15- 40) you can transfer the pokemon and you get 2 more candies towards your next evolution.

So that is basically the whole game, but i might make another blog explaining more in depth and in detail. :)

MAPS NJ Soccer Tournament 2016

Over this past weekend, I traveled to New Jersey and played soccer matches in the scorching sun. It was a heat wave all up and down the East Coast. We played four games overall: 2 on Saturday and 2 on Sunday. I had no idea what the competition would be like but I just wanted to play my best.

Usually my mom and I fly to tournaments but this time it was close enough to drive. We were able to carpool with one of my teammates and drive seven hours down to Bensalem, PA where our hotel was located. For these tournaments, you have to stay where GPS (Global Premier Soccer) says you have to stay. We were were about 40 minutes from Fort Dix, NJ where our games were being held.

Here are some highlights of the games:

Game 1 vs. Centre Court FC (a NJ club)

My team, GPS 2006 North National, won the game 3-1.  We had a lot of chances but we just couldn't finish more goals. My coaches was looking for high intensity, good communication, and through balls throughout the weekend. This first game was the easiest out of all four games. However, it was the first game that our team had played together since we went to the National Futsal tournament in Kansas. This was a challenge because we don't get to play together a lot. But, I think we did very well.

Game 2 vs. another NJ club

This game was a very hard-fought match but we ended up losing 2-1 to very unlucky goals. I thought I did very well in this game. In the second half, we did a LOT better because we noticed we weren't communicating effectively in the first half and we were a bit slow at the start. It didn't help that it was 2:00pm and 98 degrees (not including humidity). Despite it being almost too hot to play, I did have a very nice "nutmeg". A "nutmeg" is when you kick the ball through the opposing player's legs.

Here's what happened: I was right near the left sideline and had one strong defender trying to trap me and I no options to pass whatsoever and it was too tight to even try to do a move around her. So, I looked down at her feet for a quick second and saw that her legs were wide apart (which is kind of an instinct when defending because you're thinking about trying to get the ball, not how wide your apart your legs are). In a flash decision, I pulled the ball back with my left foot so it would go just behind my right foot and I kicked the ball through the girl's legs! That was definitely MY highlight of the game (if I do say so myself). What was great for my mom is that is happened right in front of her! She told me she screamed but I didn't hear her. I was just focused on the game. It was a tough one.

In the 2nd half, we started out very fast and with a very high intensity level and we were able to score. Everyone said that we outplayed them the second half but we couldn't pull off a tie or get a lucky goal. This team ended up winning the whole tournament for our age group and bracket.

3rd game vs. another NJ team

This game was temperature-wise, the coolest game. We ended up winning this one 2-1. Technically, we really like to think it was 3-1 because I brought up the ball, beat a defender with my speed, crossed a beautiful pass to our striker who had two girls on her and she slid and scored in the right corner. The ref called it back due to "off sides". The girl who scored, her mom was filming and caught the goal. When we went back to view the goal after the game was over, it was clearly not "off sides". I heard that my coach and the other team's coach discussed it and even the opposing team's coach didn't think is was off sides. Frustrating. The ref was really not good and there was a theory that our first goal was off sides but he didn't call it. So, he decided to try and fix his mistake by calling the second goal which was almost an exact replay of the first, off sides.

4th and final game vs. another NJ team

Well, this game a bit of a let down because we had a healthy 2-0 lead but ended up losing 3-2. We scored our first goal in like the first minute and the second within the next 5 minutes. The second goal was my only goal of the weekend but it was a very nice goal off a through ball. This was what my coach was looking for to create opportunities to score the goals. After I scored, I quickly "dabbed" to my coach because he was joking and said if we scored we should do a dance move like the "dab" or the "running man". I didn't see it but my mom said he did a quick dab back and had a smile on his face.

The second half we started off really slow and couldn't seem to find our momentum from the first half. We let up two easy goals and it was a tie game all the way up to the final minute. In the final minute, everyone was exhausted from the heat, and large field (I forgot to tell you that we were playing 7v7 on a field that was like a 9v9 field), and we just fizzled and lost our energy. They were able to toe-poke a ball to the left corner and scored. There was no way our goalie could save it.


Overall analysis of the weekend/tournament:

Basically, I have to say that overall I feel that we played really well everything considered. This group of girls are people I consider great friends and phenomenal soccer players. It's weird when you don't get to play with your team except on these big deal tournaments. There is a lot of pressure on the team, and we never know what the competition is going to be like. But, in the end, we always try to stay positive and learn how to get better.

One last thing...I would like to say goodbye and thank you to my coach, Matt. He is a wonderful coach but he is moving on to a new job in another well known soccer club, the New England Revolution. He is also getting married in August. So, he will have a lot of new chapters in his life. However, I hope he always remembers the chapter he spent with us and smiles.

WBZ Tour

    Today I got to go on a tour at WBZ news! When my dad went to London on his semester abroad, he went with a girl named Paula who is an anchor at WBZ news, so he asked her if we could get a quick tour of the place, and she got in touch with Danielle Niles and Pamela Gardener (both meteorologists)and made it happen! It was such an amazing experience for me because that is what I want to be when I grow up. I know that the meteorologists stand in front of a green screen, but it was cool to see what everything looks like. And, Pamela even let me have the experience that a meteorologist has by letting me click through the slides and describe what the maps and radar shows, and figuring out where to look and point. Since the President was having a speech about the supreme court, Danielle had less time to present the forecast. She only had about a minute! She had to go fast and keep it simple. It was fascinating that there were so many jobs to help edit, record, broadcast live on TV, and produce! I got to see people recording live for the WBZ radio, and even got to see my neighbor, and how she edits the sound and decides what is on the radio station at the moment. I want to thank Pamela, and Danielle for taking time out of their really busy day and taking me on a tour around the studio, and thanks to Paula for making this all happen! I didn't get to meet Paula because she works the night meteorologist shift, but Danielle and Pamela were so nice to me, and I really enjoyed them and the experience.