Something just happens
for once in a life
like a trip to a desert
a day into the sand
with sandy people
singing and dancing
colorful desert girls
with the elderly man
who plays a charming bin.

A delightful camel ride
too far, too far.
If luck permits
a pleasant sun set.

Walking on dunes
falling on it
and trying again.

An evening in a camp
sitting in a mehafil
leaning on pillow
with hot cup of tea
enjoying exotic song
eating spicy food
enjoying exotic dance.

and all of a sudden
a light desert storm.
all you can witness
just in a day
just like me.

So don’t ask me
what’s there to see
into the sea of the sand.
Just make a plan
as quick as you can
a trip to that land
of great Jaisalmer.

I chose this poem, mostly because I like the tone it sets about the dry and arid desert. I also love traveling, and I think, even though I’m not really one for poems, it really is a good one.

Legos were the most important thing to me as a kid. I couldn’t live without them. Every free moment I had was filled with building cool creations. I don’t know what I’d be doing as a kid if I didn’t have them to play with.

My favorite part about them is that I could make anything I wanted, without any limits. I could make a skyscraper, a racecar, a spaceship, anything. I couldn’t do this with any other toy nearly as well.

Seeing my little brothers play with Legos remind me about the good old days of being a kid!

Credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego

So, here are some of my favorite apps with a description for each, really in no particular order.

Skype: For computer, iPad, and iPhone, it’s diverse and brilliant. With no real competition in video chat, it’s a very useful app that I use all the time at home. I can talk to any of my friends, no matter how far away, as long as they’re online. I can also use it to talk to my friends while I play some sort of game with them.

Steam: This one is for computer only, but still great. It’s an app I use to organize all of the games on my computer. I have literally every game on my computer loaded onto this and it works great. I can also see what my friends have been up to recently with game playing.

Myscript: This is a calculator that has the ability to make anything you write into an equation. I can write down any equation on my math homework, and it will solve it for me!

Web converter: This one is a website, but it’s really cool. It can convert any type of file into a different type. This is very useful for going back and forth between Mac and PC.

If it’s hot and you need a place to cool yourself off, I know the perfect place to go. It’s got rope swings and sandy shores, boats and bats, cool water on sunny days, and plenty of other great features. What is this place? It’s my favorite place in Austin, ironically enough, Lake Austin.

If bats are your thing, you’ll definitely want to come to Congress Ave. Bridge, home of one of the largest bat colonies in the US. I’ve been there, to one of the largest attractions in Austin. The stillness and silence while I waited was maddening, I could hear my heart beating. Then, when night approached, I started hearing squeaks. Looking around to identify the noise, the sky blackened: due to the millions of bats drowning out the sky!

So, the bats are cool, but my favorite feature about Lake Austin is boating. Whether it’s wakeboarding or relaxing, there’s fun to be had for everyone in boating. What makes it better than boating anywhere else in Austin is because of the water quality. The water that is pulled from the bottom of Lake Travis (Lake Austin is a constant level lake) so the water is always cool, even on the hottest days. The lake is also narrow, which means a wave and bump reduction.

These are only some reasons why you should visit Lake Austin. I hope you see why it’s my favorite place!

Dark, damp, cold.

This, this wretched place; is where I live. It reflects me in more ways than one. This dark, empty place. Like my heart, I need someone to share this loneliness and darkness with. If only Christine was here with me, to cast the shadows away. If only…

My lair, with its lonely organ and deep, mirror-like lake, is far from welcoming. The labyrinth under the opera house holds no surprises around its many corners for me. The nooses hanging from the ceiling, as ominous as they would seem, haven’t caught anyone, as nobody ever comes for a “friendly visit”.

My lair is a lonely, terrible wreck. I’ve tried to leave, but everywhere I go, I’m turned down. Here, in a cruel, unfeeling way, is where I belong.

Some people just don’t get it. Why shoot each other for fun? What’s the point?

The point is that it’s fun, and not only is it fun individually, but with your friends too. All you need are some guns, an open field, sand people to play with, and you can play all day.

Overall, it’s a fun sport and you should try it!

The crowd goes wild as the last skier steps up to the slope style skiing block, and screams even louder when he performs impossible-looking jumps and flips. And then comes the silent moment when the judges announce his score–his gold medal winning score! As his teammates run to congratulate him, I realize somthing. His teammates had won silver and bronze! And the country they’re skiing for, not supprisingly, is America.

I find it funny that a new event (like slope style skiing) is immediately taken over by the Americans and their pro skating teams, leaving the other countries in the dust. I’m not complaining, it’s just that there isn’t a sport that America doesn’t have influence in, Olympic or not.

I guess it doesn’t matter who wins, as long as it looks good on TV!

It’s 9:00 when the phone rings, and when I see that the school is calling, I scream: SNOW DAY! Of course, Texas is afraid of snow and ice, so I was at least expecting a late start day. Even the slightest chance of sleet, and we stop everything we’re doing to work the “chaos” into our schedule. I’m fine with it, though–No school is always better than a late start!

One of the reasons why everybody freaks out about the ice is because we just aren’t used to it. If we were, the city would have a crew pour salt and sand for traction and for melting the snow/ice. But because we aren’t prepared, the ice just sits on the road and screws with everybody’s day.

Another thing wrong about this whole situation is that the school is treating ice like a major catastrophe. Why? Compared to what happened to the people on the east coat who literally were frozen into their homes, this is nothing other than a minor setback.
We need to stop treating this ice situation so seriously.

I honestly think that if we got a real ice storm, it would be for the best. Maybe then we can finally stop freaking out about tiny patches of ice!

So about 6 weeks ago, I was coming home from school and stopped, confused. There was a small, caramel-colored cat playing with my younger brothers (Will and Ben) on the driveway. I had never seen this cat before and asked my mom where it came from. She said that he had followed Will while he was riding his bike around the house, and apparently the owners live a few houses down, but were on vacation. I pick him up and see look at his name tag. “Milo…interesting name.” I say to myself. Milo seemed nice enough, he didn’t resist as I picked him up. “The owners are gone for the weekend,” my mom said. “He’ll be staying with us for a while.”

And from then on his nickname was The Nomad Cat, coming to our house whenever he wants attention. Sometimes he sleeps overnight in the garage in the bed we made out of old blankets for him, sometimes not. We never really know where he is, but one thing is for certain: he’s a true cat in doing as he pleases.

So, when I heard about geocaching of the first time, I was amazed that containers full of small items were littered practically all across the globe. I went and did a little bit of research, and decided that I should go and find some geocaches. I successfully found some and had a lot of fun finding the geocaches. So I did a little bit more research and found that there was also a system called travel bugs.

Travel bugs are little dog tags that have a code written on them that go in geocaches for people to find. When found, the person who found the travel bug enters the code into the geocaching website and it tracks where the bug has been. Afterwards you put the travel bug in a new geocache. So I bought a travel bug and put it in a geocache near me. And sure enough, a week later somebody took it and dropped it in a new cache. Except when I looked up its new location, it was in Austria! It’s still an active travel bug and has moved to 20 different locations in Austria since I put it in Austin.

Geocaching is fun and I recommend it to everyone!