Month: May 2023

Many memories have been made at my school. One of these is when we got to bring board games to school. I chose to bring throw throw burrito, which is a card game combined with burrito dodgeball. The game has 2 rounds, and after we finished we had a burrito duel tournament. My second memory is having donuts and hot chocolate in the morning. My class won a sock drive, and we got donuts and hot chocolate. My final memory is getting my 20% project. I had lots of fun practicing my yo yo.

For my 20% project, I am doing yo-yoing. This was our final week, and I wasn’t at school. Instead I practiced at home. I refined my new trick that I made up myself, practiced all of my tricks, which are: standard bind, a trick to get the yo-yo back up to my hands, brain twister, a trick that spins the yo-yo around your hands, rock the baby, a trick that puts the yo yo in a triangle that rocks it back and forth, the breakaway, a different throw, man on the flying trapeze, a half mount half trick that is sideways, and laceration, a side style bind. Midway through I replaced the string because it got knotted. Even after all of the practice I have done over the past 6 weeks, I still have some troubles. Some of them include, bad throws, not landing tricks such as man on the flying trapeze, and uncontrollable spinning.

Experience in life changes by life experience. In the image above, there is 2 children. One has lots of toys and video games but is dissatisfied, while the other has is happy with a simple stick car. I think the reason why one is sad with a lot is because all of the toys he has are all average to him, while the happy child the car is above average to him, and so he will be more happy. In the sad child’s environment, it looks like he has an easy life, so it is harder to get satisfaction because he never worked for it. In the happy child’s environment, it looks rough, so any happiness that anyone else would get would feel more satisfying, because there might be less, and he might have worked for it.

My week 5 of my 20% project was interesting. I first started practicing all my Yoyo tricks, mostly Eli hops. I then started practicing this one trick called the dna. After a while of trying, I learned 2 things. 1st, my Yoyo has a bump in the middle of the shell, which made it difficult to balance on my finger. Second, when I did land it, it would lose all its speed. I then thought that the best trick for me to learn is one I came up with on my own. I started testing and coming up with ideas. I came up with an idea for a trick I am calling reverse trapeze. It happens when you get into the swing motion of the trapeze, and then crossing your hands, but I ran into 2 issues. 1, it uses a lot of speed, and 2, when getting out of the trick could go wrong and spin out of control.

The book I read for this month is Refugee by Alan Gratz. Refugee isn’t a normal novel, though. It has three separate story’s about the characters struggles in undesirable situations. The 1st of these stories is about a Jewish boy named Josef in the 1940s. After their father is taken to concentration camps, they are given the opportunity to leave Germany with their father. They leave on a cruise ship for Cuba, but while on the ship they realize that their father isn’t the same. The second story is a boy in Syria named Mahmoud and his family escaping Syria after their house got struck by a missile. The goal to find a home had many roadblocks and crossing many countries. The third story is about a Cuban girl named Isabel. Her home country, Cuba, was getting lots of protests. Because of this, Cuba allowed people to legally leave via boat. So Isabel, her family, and her friend Lito’s family. They come across many challenges as sharks, oncoming boats, and the US coast guard. The reason this book is good is because it has three stories. If one story is slow or boring, the next chapter will move on to the next. My favorite character is Josef. I like him because he is Jewish, and I am also Jewish. He just became a bar-mitzvah, like me. My favorite quote from him is, “I am the man in the room now.” Which shows bar-mitzvahs show that you are a man. My favorite quote in the book comes from Isabel’s grandfather, “We’ll let you in mañana.” If I explained this quote it would spoil the plot, but it connects Isabel’s and Josef’s stories.

My favorite room in my house is my bedroom. My bedroom is on the side of my house, with 3 windows at the end. I have a loft bed, with my desk underneath. My bed has three normal pillows, and a big red one that has sides. My desk I custom made, which is a birch plywood that I stained and finished myself. My desk has my computer on it, as well as my Xbox. The loft is propped up by 4 wooded blocks because my drawers wouldn’t fit under the desk without them.

For my %20 project I am doing yo-yoing. For this week I practiced the breakaway throw, man on the flying trapeze, and another new bind called the laceration bind. It involves whipping the string under the Yoyo. I have got it multiple times, but most of them it knotted so I had to take it apart to unknot it. I also started learning a new trick called elk hops. You get into the man on the flying trapeze mount. Then moving your hand back and forth to have the Yoyo bounce off the string.