Brussels and all its' mussels.....

During the March break, my parents and I visited Brussels, the capital city of Belgium. Before we saw any tourist attractions we went to our hotel the Radisson Park-in. After checking in, we got down to business and bought tickets to Bruges and Ghent. The train ride was amazing. Both Bruges and Ghent had a lot of antique shops and some fascinating buildings. We also visited a few churches - the Basilica of the Holy blood and Church of our Lady of Bruges. The church’s architecture was stunning, it was all done up with huge pretty murals on the walls. Another tourist attraction in Brussels was the Manneken Pis,  a sculpture of a bronze boy peeing into a fountain. Manneken Pis also happens to be the symbol of the city of Brussels. What’s interesting about the boy is that they dress him up for different celebrations and events. For dinner, we went to a place called l’Escale they served us shrimp roasted in white wine. Delish!!!  I had some local Belgian pasta. The food was really good. The next day we went to a market which was really bustling with people. We got some fresh fruits and vegetables, then some chocolates and sweets from a candy mstore. Brussels was a lot of fun! I hope I can visit again soon.

What Christmas means to me?

Christmas may be a time for new presents, Santa Claus and meeting family but there is more meaning to Christmas than that. On Christmas 2014 years ago a little boy named Jesus was born, he is the Son of Man and did important things and performed miracles like turning water into wine, raising the dead back to life and dying on the cross for us. I believe that ‘’Jesus is the reason for the season’’ and that we should ‘’Keep Christ in Christmas ‘’

Christmas is a time to think of the less fortunate than us. For the last two weeks of advent my family & I went to our local food bank to donate food and help out. I got to see how sad it was to watch people have such joy over one meal but it also made me think about not wasting food and eating whatever is served to me. You can also give your time caroling at the senior home. I am sure that will make them happy. During the season we can all be more patient and caring towards others like showing more forgiveness and tolerance. I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and remember:

Christmas is coming

It’ll go fast

Give someone joy

 Joy that’ll last

My Vacation in London and Paris

Recently my family and I went to London and Paris. We spent 10 days in all and had a great time, let me tell you all about it. The best place that we went to was the Harry Potter Studios. There I dressed up as Ron, accepted a challenge to find 15 hidden snitches (which I won), I climbed and flew a Nimbus 2000, drank butter beer, visited HOGWARTS!!!!!, bought Bertie Botts every flavoured Beans, saw all my favorite characters WANDS, walked through the shops of Diagon Alley, made my own spell, made and bought my own wand and my audio tour guide was Tom Felton. Another day we went on the Big Bus Tour where we saw the top-secret foreign intelligence spy organisation facility, Big Ben, London Eye, St. Paul’s church, the |Shard, RAF bomber memorial, Stonehenge, Hyde Park, Buckingham palace. Boy, was that fun... We also went to Paris we spent three days there doing a lot of touristy stuff. The first place we went to was the Eiffel Tower, got great pictures there, saw the Mona Lisa in person, we went to Notre Dame and attended a mass. The next day we went to Sacre Coeur and the Arc de Triomphe.  When we got back to London we headed to Salisbury where we saw some of the Magna Carta documents, Windsor Castle and the Greenwich Mean time. Then it was time to head back to Canada. I will never forget this trip, this amazing trip filled with lots and lots of fun.

My Amazing Summer!

This summer was an amazing experience, let me tell you why. After school ended I could have easily been the happiest person alive… no work, no teachers…no worries…. what could be more right? So let me begin the summery of my amazing summer. This summer I went camping for the very first time with my friends and parents. We roasted marshmallows, slept in tents and overall had a great time. The next big I did this summer was paddle boarding, a new sport I learned while at day camp. It is a lot of fun but can be a little bit dangerous if you are not careful. Paddle boarding is stand up canoeing on a surf board. I had a lot of fun with this new sport and it taught me a couple of thing - first of all it taught me balance and trust. The trust part of it is because I couldn’t go alone so I had to trust that my friends don’t tip the board or lean it when we get on. Another cool thing I did this summer was the U.S. trip, I went to Michigan to see my cousins. We played catch in the pool and did an icy challenge where we would go into the hot tub for 3 minutes and then jump into the freezing cold pool. In Michigan we visited a place called Frankenmuth a little German town about 20 minutes away from Saginaw where we enjoyed live music, food and the company of family. The rest of summer went by with visits to my friends houses when we had no camp. Our typical day consisted of video games, TV, outside fun and great food. Playing in the park was another thing I did this summer with my friends; I hung on the monkey bars a lot and my friends and I invented games like “The shoe game” and “Sand volley / basketball”. My summer was awesome and I will never forget it. This summer I did so many new things and I enjoyed them all, I hope that my next summer is as good or better that this one.

The Camping Trip

This past Canada Day weekend I went with my friends and family on a camping trip to Algonquin and I was really excited. Considering it was my first time I didn’t know what to expect but that just made me want to get there faster. 

I had heard from my friend that bears lurked in the forest that we were going to but when I got there it seemed like a really nice place to spend the next 4 days… other than the fact that Algonquin was swarming with mosquitoes. 

At Algonquin I got to solve a mystery about a bird called a Black-Capped Chickadee and why it disappeared. I was very interesting as I have never even heard of this species of bird before. Algonquin also gave me the opportunity to learn about loggers at a Loggers museum. A logger is also known as a lumberjack. At the museum we were taken through an open forest where they displayed a variety of machines and axes loggers used. After the Loggers museum my friends and I decided to take a break. So we went for a swim in the lake. Despite the fact that the water was FREEZING, it was awesome once I got used to it. Another highpoint of the trip was roasting marshmallows. Boy were they good & I asked for s’more! 

Camping was a great experience and I would love to go again. :D

The Cottage Trip to Goderich

On this past Victoria long weekend my family joined 4 other families and headed out to a cottage in a SMALL town called Goderich with only 8000 people living there.
Day 1

The cottage was a lot of fun when we got there. In the morning we played soccer, pump and basketball. Towards the afternoon we went on a walk to the Nude Beach yes you got it the Nude Beach. Why it was called that, I have absolutely no idea. At first the Nude beach was weird with 4 dead fish lying in the sand in the warm sand. Then it got interesting: I found 5 fossils and 3 really cool rocks, they were amazing. At 2 o’clock we went to a cheese factory and sampled 9 year old mozzarella and we even got to eat homemade ice cream. The cheese factory was definitely a cool experience for me. After the cheese factory we went back to the cottage and played till about 6 o'clock on our iPods. We then gathered arounf the fire for some ghost stories...... boy were they scary, when we had had enough we went inside and watched Broken Arrow. That was a great start to the cottage trip.

Day 2

I woke up and played video games for an hour with my friends and then we got out of the house and played soccer. We went to a another beach a little farther from our cottage and there I found more fossils and cool rocks. When we got back we built another fire and this time I roasted my first marshmallow and ate my first s'more, it was delicious. After we roasted AWESOME smores my friends and I performed an improv about a miner that encountered some monsters. Later we watched Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban, I liked very much I am a huge fan of Harry Potter. We finished the movie and went upstairs to play video games even though it was 1 o'clock in the morning. When I was at the verge of dying of exhaustion I turned off my iPod and went to sleep.

Day 3 

I woke up today realizing with a sad and sleepy face that we only had till 12 o'clock to leave home and the time was 8 o'clock so I woke up my friends to make the most of our last few hours there. We went for a walk along the beach and we skipped rocks on the calm lake Huron.

It was a truly enjoyable weekend, one I will remember for a long time to come.

Divergent – A Critique

Divergent is a book starring 16 year old, Tris Prior. She belongs to faction Abnegation, one of the five facions. Each faction has a meaning – Erudite – Knowledge, Dauntless – Bravery, Amity – Passive, Candor – Brutally and Abnegation – Selflessness. The blurb on the back of the book provides no clues about the storyline so does not peak interest in readers.

16 year old Tris Prior and her brother are old enough to take the aptitude test to decide which faction they will join. But these choices aren’t easy, as it sets your future. During her test something goes wrong and Tris is determined a Divergent. She is not allowed to tell anyone about this and she isn’t allowed to ask anyone either. Divergent is a dangerous thing to be, yet 90% of Abnegation’s 16 year olds are Divergent. Her decision to leave Abnegation and join Dauntless, put her life in danger.

Readers searching for action, violence, mystery and betrayals should read this book. The Hunger Games and Divergent are so alike in this sense. The girls are both fighters and are willing to give up everything for their people. But without a doubt, Veronica Roth is an amazing author and deserves credit for a cliff hanger.

Divergent kids should have their own faction and should be equally respected as other factions. They should represent Difference. I think Veronica should have explained why Divergence occurs and how people who resist Divergent kids, should be stopped.

The politics in the book was unnecessary because Veronica talked about it rarely and then dropped the topic. In the book, it makes no mention that this is the future of Chicago.

Also too many character names was a problem. For example, Beatrice Prior changes her name to Tris when she moves factions and then in Insurgent she goes by Six. Names should stay the same and not change, so we don’t totally forget who the character is.

Divergent is a great book, meant for teenagers and up. I give the book 8.5 out of 10.