Tuesday, November 5, 2013

At the Orchard

Two posts in two days...say what?! I know, I know, you can thank me later ;).

Anyways, this was the last football game of the season, so of course everyone had to go. However, we were playing another inner-city school that no one had heard of, it was cold, and it was senior recognition night. That means literally every.single.senior. in the marching band, chorus, and color guard, as well as every player on the football team would get individually introduced and congratulated. If you're a senior, and you know who all of these people are, I'm guessing you would enjoy it since this is your last high school football game ever. But when you're a freshman, all that talking gets pretty boring, so we ended up leaving during the third quarter, in favor of a much more enjoyable venue.
I also discovered that Krispy Kreme donuts, as delicious as they are, somehow taste even better at 11pm after you've been standing on freezing bleachers for 3 hours. Also, if you haven't tried the Pumpkin Spice donuts yet, do.it.now. If you like the old-fashioned donuts from Starbucks, and you like pumpkin, you'll be very happy with these. 

The next day I got up extra-early (not intentionally, but it Daylight Savings Time started and threw me off), and went with two of my friends to Carter Mountain to go apple picking! It's about an hour's drive nearly straight up the side of the mountain. 
In this picture there are guardrails along the edge, but believe me when I say that in about 30 seconds those rails disappeared and the road starting rising straight up. The fact that we essentially risked our lives for some apples says a lot about how delicious they are. Well, we also went for the apple cider and Carter Mountain's world-famous apple cider donuts (I don't have a picture-the four of us gobbled up an entire dozen of them before I could get my camera out!). We sat down at the picnic tables and struggled to keep our hair down in the freezing wind as we sipped our apple cider and ate our donuts. Sitting at the top of that mountain, the view of the valley beneath us nearly took our breath away. 
After we'd had our fill of the view (and the food), we hiked up to the orchards. We headed straight for my favorite apples, fuji! Luckily this section of the orchard had just been opened up for the season, so we practically got first pick. 
After we'd picked more apples than we could carry, I bought another half-dozen donuts to take home for my family (I ended up eating most of them ;)), and we headed on home. There's just nothing better than apple picking in the fall! 




Monday, November 4, 2013

School Projects

I know, I know, I haven't posted anything in maybe a decade (okay, two weeks, but in the blogging world those are basically the same thing). Honestly I just haven't been doing anything really blog-worthy lately, and have been so swamped with schoolwork that I all I've had time to do is study. It seems that since the first marking period ends this week, all of my teachers are frantically cramming in the required number of tests, quizzes, and projects that they somehow forgot to factor into the rest of the term. Which means that instead of giving you guys a great post about Halloween, I spent the entire night at home finishing a formal lab write-up due the next day. This lab counts as three test grades, and my teacher forgot to give us the rubric for it until the day before it was due, which coincidentally happened to be Halloween, and I had specifically gotten all of my homework done on Wednesday just so I would be able to go out with my friends. Sidenote: this is also the teacher that lost my quiz before she could grade it, so she gave me a zero. 
On a separate note, in World History we're learning about the Exploration (Columbus, the New World, etc. etc.). But because I'm in this accelerated program at my school, instead of taking a test on the unit, we had two projects instead. 
Project 1: Two mock-trials, where Christopher Columbus and Francisco Pizarro were being charged for crimes against humanity against the natives of the Americas. You were assigned a part for one of the trials (defense/prosecution witness or defense/prosecution attorney), and you would serve on the jury for whichever trial you weren't apart of. We spent a week researching our character (I was a Peninsular, a defense witness, which is a member of the top social rank of Spaniards in the New World), and then would be tried in the court. It was actually really fun! It was a little intimidating to be questioned in front of the entire class (especially when, as a Peninsular, I had to defend the use of slavery and the murder of thousands of Incan natives), but overall I'd say it was much cooler than a test, and we learned a lot. Plus, the jury found Pizarro not guilty (both juries had to base their rulings solely on the evidence provided during the trial, even if they knew that it wasn't accurate), and we won the case! 
Project 2: Everyone created a dish that used ingredients from the New World and the Old World. We all brought in the food on Monday, and we spend the entire class eating! Needless to say, this was definitely one of my favorite projects ever. I made Nutella rolls with cream cheese icing, and made the biscuit dough myself. These sound good, but they came out disappointingly bland. However, I remade the recipe using a pumpkin-cream cheese filling I developed, and they are amazing-recipe coming soon! 

Anyways, I just wanted to throw a quick post out there to let you all know I'm alive, and will post something much more interesting shortly!