Skateistan

The plane lands. Yes, I am here! As soon as I get off the plane it becomes very hot; I shouldn't have worn pants but whatever. I weave my way through the airport. My hat is making me pretty hot. I get to the baggage claim and grab my duffle bag full of skateboards. I am waiting outside for Ollie and soon enough he comes in the van. I put my stuff in the back and I am then greeted by him. "What's Up dude?" He says and in return I say, "Hey bro." We then go to Ollie's house and there is Kenny Reed. He is my favorite professional skater, by the way, so it was super exciting seeing him. Since it is already six, I am not going to get to go to the warehouse which is kinda a bummer. We eat a plain dinner of rice and beef. Then just relax and watch Kenny "ollie" off the porch. The sun shines in my eyes and I slowly wake up. I immediately smell some kind of bread. So I hop out of bed, put some skating jeans on and a plain t-shirt and some socks. Now I have to pick what shoes I want to wear because I brought four pairs of VANS© and one pair of Nikes. I choose a pair of VANS©, they are cheaper and are better skating shoes. I eat the bread but the milk was disgusting so I drank some bottled water. I then jumped in the van and chose a girl skateboard out of my bag. Off we go I am pulsing with excitement, and I can't wait to get there. We are here; I jump out of the car and sprint in and as soon as I am in the building I am in shock at how amazing this place is. There is no one here so I jump on my board and start skating around jumping off stuff, ollieing over ramps and snapping on the half pipe. Skating was fun but all the kids get here, so I go to meet them. Fortunately, I get to skate again before school starts. I have the kids teach me some things about skating seeing that a lot of them are better than me. It is time for class so we go inside and we learn math that I have already learned so the teacher has me teach. That happens in many of the other classes like English but not Afghani; they teach me and I have a lot of fun learning it. In one class we are praying and I hear a helicopter fly over. For me this is normal but they are scared, I realize they are very tense, the teacher stops the class and is listening, waiting for the helicopter to fly away. I then realize that the helicopter is American and that they saw it flying by and it made them horrified to see it. I realize how lucky I am not to be scared of things like that. The day goes on and we skate a little more then it is time to go back to the house with Ollie. It has been a very fun day and I have learned a lot. I hope I can come back.

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Day Five

Tap on the forhead. I immediatly wake up "what do you want I say". Jackson and Shen are laughing in the doorway of the tent.The tent is freezing and when they left the door was wide open so I guess I will just wake up. I put my clothes on (jeans and a hoodie), but it was freezing. I jumped back in the tent and quicly put long underwear under everything. Oh warmth you are the best. I go back out side. It is not cold anymore and now I can get over to where everyone else is. Everyone is complaining its so cold or the ride is gonna suck. Well I am officially not looking forward to the ride because it is 20 miles long. It is also going to be cold. Yay just what I want to hear I say to my friends (sarcasim). Sweats would be a good idea but what if it gets hot. After breakfeast I grab my shorts grab a t-shirt out of Shani's tent because I ran out of clean ones yesterday. Jump in a van and go to the start of the ride. After the two mile uphill we get a nice long downhill. We get to a flat and there is so many headwinds its just plain annoying. Finally we stop in river bed and have a little lunch. Then we go to the side of a little river. The group leader tell us we have to cross it and I say "with our shoes?" The teacher tells us yes of course your not just going to take your shoes off and put them back on again. I walk across through the mud squishing sloshing trudging through the mud. We get back to camp and I immidietly jump out of everything put a bathing suit grab a tool and shampoo and sprint for the shower. I jump in washing all the mud off my legs. Tonight is the last fire so it is all about the ninth graders and how they are leaving. I dont see anything because I am sleeping I slept the whole time. When I get up hug some people goodnight, and go to bed. I walk into the tent. Drop on my sleeping. Shred my clothes off me. Hop under the covers. Say goodnight to Jackson and just drop dead asleep.

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Day Four

Snap awake. Look around and see that Jackson is gone. So I get up put some warm clothes on and head out to get breakfast, but before I get to the trailer I run into Jackson and some of my friends. So I stop to talk. After breakfast me and Jackson went and got the stuff. After that we packed up our tent and started heading out, getting ready for the ride. We hopped on our bikes and left. After an hour of riding against the wind, my group stopped for lunch. We had pb&j sandwiches, apples and Rice Crispy Treats. Then we kept riding, and after a while were back at camp. We had a good diner and a short fun fire. That night I slept very well.

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Day three

Oh, the slide guitar. I hear Jim coming along playing it weaving in between tents. After I wake up, there are my clothes all fresh in my bag I grab them out and put them on and then tap Jackson who is still sleeping. He does not wake up, so I grab some grass and stick it in his ear. He wakes up "what the hell, dude!"
 "Its okay," I tell him, but we have to go get ready. We eat breakfast together, get our bikes ready, then go over to the swings. After some time there and a brief talk with the Dunn School students, we hop on our bikes and go. Today was supposed to be easy, but there was a strong headwind on us. After a long time of biking, we get into Flying Flags Campground, and that is where we finish our ride. When we got there, we were required to take showers. So me and Jackson got our stuff and went to the showers. A few hours later, the camp fire was finishing up and I was falling asleep. When it was finally over, me and Jackson walked to our tent, took all our stuff off and went right to sleep.

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Day 2

I woke up early to the sound of Jackson snoring, I slowly stretch out and get up and out of the tent. Like me, there are lots of other people awake. I hung out with people for a little while then we had breakfast and then got ready for biking and took off. We started going down hill. We were first going kinda slow, then we came around a corner and I realized Jake, my group, leader had taken off way down the hill, so I let go of my brakes and started flying down the hill. After many ups and downs, we finally got to camp. Then we had a nice long campfire, a very good diner and went to sleep.

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Day 1

Here we go getting on the bikes after we get off the bus. Starting the ride and the trip. I was not looking forward to that day at all. I was very mad and didn't  want to keep riding but I did because I will never sag I promised myself myself that I would never sag. We kept going up hills, over and over. Finally when the ride was almost over there was a downhill. It was  on the pavement and I thought I was gonna get hit by a car. Finally we get to the camp sight. We get to sleep late that night but it was a long rest.

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Larger Voices Calling: Dragons, Dreamers, and Doers, day 1 dragon spine

Having so much fun going up hills racing down hills, sleeping at someone person who I don't know's  house, seeing Lige, eating gross food.

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Walking on Water

I get up very early because I know its going to be a very long walk I meet up with the other kids going to the water hole. We get our jugs and start walking to the water hole all of the little kids come to see us leave. Once we our out of the village we start talking about stuff when we here a loud hissing we look to the left there is a black mamba off to the side of the trail everyone takes off because we don't have shoes so we can't get bitten we all run down the trail the we were safe. When we got to the water hole two hours later there is no more water so we have to go two more hours to the river. We get there and the villagers there greet us kindly we talk for a bit then we make our trip back to the village. When we get there we say bye and go to our houses.

As soon as i'm out of the airport I am rushed into the armored car with armed guards. Then we drive to Keelin's village once I get there she's there with her whole family. We talked a bit then we went inside. The kids stayed home from school because I was there. She asked me if I was ready for lunch and I said I was so we sat down to lunch which was a chicken on rice in mole (chocolate sauce with salt and spices) and we had goat milk which I thought was horrible but the food was good. So after that we talked alot about they're life and my life. We talked so long that it was soon dinner time so we had to sit down we had tacos which were amazing and we had fanta for a drink, once we were done we went to sleep.

Currency exchange

The money in Honduras is called the lempira The $1 for them is negative cents for us. The $5 for them is 26 cents for us the $10 for them is 52 cents for us. They're $20 is $1.05 in our money and they're $100 is $5.25 for us.

The 10 words I chose

hello-hola  good-bueno  cow-vaca  clothes-ropas  car-caro  more-mas  don't understand-no intiendo  store-tienda  more-mas  help-socorro

Transportation to Honduras

I go to the Santa Barbara airport and to LAX then i go to my gate I get on my plane and in 4 hours I land in tegucigalpa honduras I then take a car with armed guards to the town of Danli where my kiva person lives.

My visit With Maruge 4

I get up after a long sleep and walk up and down Maruge's yard for about 20 minutes well his neighbors are giving me weird looks. When Maruge finally gets up I have found 5 eggs and already got the stove running. When he got up I said I was going to make something called an over easy egg so I made two for him and one for me. He liked them but his favorite part was the yolk with a little salt. We get ready and go to school but today were going on a field trip to a village I have never heard of. When we get there I realize this village is tiny and only has a few people so I go to ask Jane why were here and she said it was because this is where one of the most important battles of the revolution was fought. Then Maruge got a sad look on his face and left the group for a while when Jane was talking about the brutal battle. After that part Maruge came back to hear about the village after the long sad day for Maruge we went right home ate dinner and went to sleep.

My Visit With Maruge 3

I wake up to the smell of some kind of meat. Maruge is wide awake making breakfast and getting dressed for school so I get up put on my vans and jeans. Then we eat breakfast and walk to school. When we get there everybody is in there seats ready to learn. Today we spent an hour talking about periods, commas and  question marks. I started spacing out because I have already learned this so much. I awake from my day dream by a tug on my shirt by a little boy. He asks me if I want to play "touch" also known as tag so once we get out there everybody is playing touch. I immediately start playing. Tag is very intense with them because they are so much faster than the first graders that I know. After playing we get lunch(keenwah, beef, and rice). Then we go back inside and read the book 14 Cows for America. They have me read it and tell about 9,11 After that me and Maruge walk home to work in the garden, collect fire wood and collect eggs from the chickens. We have a dinner(eggs) and we tell stories. He tells me about britain occupying africa and I tell him about 9,11 more scary and detailed after that we go to bed.

My Visit Maruge 2

It's been about three months since I was in Africa and now I'm going back. After the very long boring flight I get off to meet Jane and Maruge waiting in the terminal for me. So we got in the car and went to the school to see all of the kids excidly attack the car and tell me to come and play  with them so I got out and we played tag and then we had to go in side when we went in side there was the smell of chalk in the air so we get right into working on adding and subtracting 100s. After school we go to maruges house and tell stories. This time I stay at maruges because I brought a sleeping bag. For dinner we have rice, beans and crickets my favorite part is the fried crickets because they are salty and crunchy. When it's time for bed we shut the door and got to sleep

my visit with maruge

As soon as I got to africa I was picked up in a taxi and taken to his village. As soon as I got there we walked to school to go meet teacher jane and all the kids. We taught for a long time I told them about the things in america and how tall the buildings are in new york. So we walked back to Maruge's house and worked in his garden for 2 hours he told me that I was going to sleep at Jane's house because his was a little to small. So jane picked me up in the taxi and took me to the her house. It was way nicer then I expected it to be. We had a dinner of steak , keenwa and carrots after that jane told me stories of the revolution of britain by the fire. Then after the stories we went to bed. When we got up we had hot rice and bread in milk. Then we went to school in her husbands car and met up with maruge and gave him a ride. When we got to school the teachers told us we had a meeting so I offered to watch the young children they said "sure". So after half an hour of recess and of fun with the kindergarteners we went in side to study more. After a few more days of working in the garden, telling stories at school and at Jane's house I left back home hoping to come back soon.