First Impressions
By Courtney

          My dad just told me that we are going to get a new car tonight, a 1967 Mustang! He told me that it was coming late at night, so I would have to wait to see it in the morning. I had to go to bed, but I was planning to stay up until it came and run downstairs to see it. I crawled into my bed, but next thing I knew my dad was telling me to wake up and get ready for school. “Aw, I didn’t stay up,” I thought. I quickly got dressed and went downstairs to see our new car. Before I opened the door, I imagined a beautiful shiny new car. I opened the garage door and I saw this old, ugly, maroon colored car that was full of spider webs. I pretended that it was the nicest car in the world because my dad was really excited and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.

            Soon, my dad started working on it every weekend. He took out the engine, built a new one, and put it back in the car. He changed almost every part in the car! Soon it was painted a shiny dark blue color and getting new wheels and tires. Now it was looking better and better!
After three years of hard work, my dad is finally finished! It is now the most fun car to ride in because it is loud, I can sit in the front seat because it has no airbags, and I can plug my IPod in and listen to all my favorite music. Now, the car is even more than I ever dreamed it would be! Have you ever had a bad first impression of something that later turned out to be great?

Chinese New Year 
by Kleo

It is a special day for Chinese on Jan. 22nd. That date is Chinese New Year. Some families put up red signs to keep away bad spirits, and there is a story to come along with it:
    Every year, a monster will wake up to eat: people. One day, the monster was waking, and an old couple were losing hope to live. A young boy insisted that he would protect them, but they dismissed it.The boy found out that the monster only feared loud noises and the color red, so he covered their house with red paper.The monster came, and the couple was terrified, but the monster was as well. He saw the red paper, and he heard the loud crackle of the fire the boy was making. He ran away, to scared to come out of his home again.
                What to you think of this story? Do think it is true?

My New Puppy
By: Ryan

One of my Christmas presents was a Shih Tzu mix puppy. The other breed is a Lhasa Apso. The puppy was bred by a breeder named Kelly. It started when I was taking the SCAT test to maybe get into a summer school taught at Stanford by the school John Hopkins. When I was done testing, my mom told me my aunt had bought one of the female puppies. My mom wanted to see it, so we went to her house. When she saw it, she thought it was really cute, so she wanted to go buy one from the breeder. When we got there, there was much to choose from. There were 5 puppies. (three were already bought, including my aunt. In all, there were three male and the 5 female. (Extra Credit: Find both ratios for these two numbers and write them in all three forms, and the fractions for both of the numbers.) I picked the only male left, which was black and white, and was ginormous and much bigger than all the others. It cost $300.( Extra question: If any of you have a dog, how much did it cost to buy it?)

When it came home it was really afraid to walk on anything, and during the night, he kept whining because the breeder sleeps with her dogs, so he doesn’t like being in a cage. But right now, after a few weeks, he knows when to sleep and is now almost potty trained, but is mischievous and likes to bites things. Shoes, shoelaces, clothes, paper, leaves, tanbark, towels, hands, feet, and anything that looks appealing to him. If you already have a dog(s), or another pet(s), do you like it(them) and would you get another once he passes away? If you don’t have a dog, would you want one? If not, what pet would you want? Also try to do the extra questions!!!  

Rohan R.'s Post

Resolutions for the New Year
by Rohan R.

    Welcome to 2012!!! I bet you have many resolutions that you are wanting to accomplish, well here are some of mine.
My first one is to get better at soccer and basketball. To do that, I am going to try to practice three times every week. My second resolution is to advance to the state finals in Destination Imagination (DI). To achieve that, I’m going to work hard with my team. My final resolution is to do a better job in school.
Well those are my resolutions. Now that you have seen them, I bet you got a clear understanding of what you want.
New Year's Eve has always been a time for looking back to the past, and more importantly, looking forward to the coming year. It's a time to reflect on the changes we want to make and to try to follow them.

The top resolutions for the new year are:

1. To spend more time with family and friends.
2. Get fit by doing your exercise regularly
3. Quit smoking
4. Enjoy life more
5. Don’t drink alcohol
6. Get out of debt
7. Learn something new
8. Help others
9. Get organized


Okay, so some of them aren’t meant for you to accomplish like to quit smoking and to stop drinking alcohol because you anyways aren’t allowed to smoke or drink, but for the rest of them, you can still use them as a resolution. Now that I think about it, what are your resolutions? How will you achieve them? These are the things that I will be waiting to see.

Aayush's Post

New Year's

By: Aayush

New years must have been fun with your family and friends. you might have been in the state or not. You could have been in a different city, but you were able to experience new years of 2012. What I did in New years was watch the ball drop with my family and later go to sleep. You all may have done something different. Oh yes and talking about New years its time to get those New years resolutions or as I would call them goals for the year. You may want goals like doing your homework on time or studying some more, but in the end you just want to reach your goal. Also a new year means new things like new technology or more new science has been discovered. Soon even the way we live might change! In all the year of 2012 might change or stay the same and we may get to experience even more. So what did you do on New Year's Eve and was it fun?