voyage of the dawn treader is coming out in 2010!!!! I cannot wait. I have always loved the narnia books and ever since prince caspian came out I have been wondering when voyage of the dawn treader will come out. Did you know lucy pevensie (or the person who plays her) is my age. she was born in 1995. edmund is 19 or 18, susan is 22 and peter is 23. and in the movie they are all in their early to mid teens. its horrible. have you ever wondered why people cast people who are way older than they are supposed to be in the movie. it always looks the same but why cant they just have them as all the same age. any way today was fun. i sat around doing nothing and then I watched julie and julia for the 2nd time since we got it, which was a week ago. I still love it. it is hilarious. the first time i watched it I laughed sooo hard ms becky probably thought I was a nut case. hehe. maybe I am. last night I slept over at erics house and we prank called people and I watched 2012. it was cool I guess and the special effect were awesome. it wasnt one of those movies you really get into and it would have been better to see in theatres. except we wouldnt be able to see it anyway.... its banned. the Indonesian government thinks that it puts fear into people so malls arent allowed to show it. nut they do anyway.
got to go
.:matthew:.

schools out for idul ahda

I rally felt the need to blog and so I am blogging... imagine that. so anyways, i cant wait for thursday. it is goig to be so awesome having a 5 day weekend. i am dreading tomorrow though becaue their are still 6 more classes until my vacation!!! urrgghhh! My life right now s what youd call average. nothing really big happening at all... haha. I havent bee swimming in a while and I am starting to work out officially. i would occasionally bafore but now \i have a list of the thingsthat i ne to do and it is going to be hard.
I CAN DO 41 PUSH UPS. and that was on a day that I was feeling sick. I cant wait until I get a gold on my fitness test for pushups. but now I have to work on my pull ups and that is really hard. I have to do 11! urrrgghhh again. it is kinda strange how my friend desmen can do a lot more that 11 but he only has one hand.
guess what.I moved up in the drums. I now play the snare, the music stand and the rain stick. yes i actually play the music stand. we are playing tarzan and I had to improvse cuz we didnt have any bottoms of kitchen bans or garbage cans. I am also staring to like bahasa now. its horrifying I know but its starting to grow on me. pak vge has made us do this booklet in math thatis super hard and last last test we almost all failed.either we are all not too smart or he didnt teach us right. when he first gave it o us he told us the grade nines are all really struggling in this area so we are going to give it to you so that you wont struggle with it next year. WHAT! so your going to give e something that grade 9s can barely grasp and obviously the grade 8's are going to uderstand it perfectly. sometimes I dont understand indonesian logic.
john, jun bum (yes thats his name), dawoon and jin jae are being moved up a level in bahasa because they are too noisy. ibu lea send them out of the class and all of a suden we had complete silence for lke 5 minutes, and then they came in again. during that 5 minutes she commented on how quiet it was and I said if she liked it she should just move them up in bahasa and she said "hey... thats a good idea..:)" so she went and wrote ther names on a post it and talked to them after wards. they are all good enough in bahasa but I feel sorr for ibu miny who will have to teach them next

wow long time no blog.

so since the last time i blogged I have written a bunch of essays taken ateleast 5 tests and ... yeah. I have also gone on retreat which is something that i would like to talk to you guys about. for three days every year each grade goes on this thing called retreat where we all go to some random place to eat, listen to devotional sessions and eat some more. not that I dont like the food but.,.. I do not like the food. so yeah. really all you know about the retreat so far is that it is lacking in food and ... there is alot of it. I wish that the worship session would at least be more thatn 2 songs seeing that the session is min. an hour long!
sometimes I do not understand indonesian culture. there is this girl in my class who does not know what a whore is yet she has gone to an english school all of her life. the story is actually really funny. she aks in the middle of class "whats a whore?" so we are al wierding out and so we answer her " its sort of like a prostitute." "whats that" by now you know she has definatly not read her old testament at all. so we tell her to ask the teacher and ... that went well. this girl is a bit of an odd ball.
anothe thing is when we do worship in chapel the worship team keeps making us stand up then sit then stand... and it gets really annoying.
I will blog later then.. see ya

random rantings /non-rantings

church is awesome! and we are moving so that makes it even more awesome . anyway i cant wait until we get to the new location. its in like 3 weeks or something. why did every body put me in charge of our class dance. didnt they see our dance last year. it was HORIIBLE! I have issues with teaching other people dances. ask tara.
life is good here in indo. I have a really cool math teacher who makes jokes and stuff. its totally awesome:)
I also have mrs rebecca as my english teacher and there is so much homework in her class. I guess that that is normal because we are writing our autobiographies and that will take a lot of work. i heard that it has to be like and inch thick and that might be a little bit hard because we are in grade 8. but apparently no one has ever not done it so yeah...
i started watching the office a few weeks ago and I am already on season 4. I sort of skipped season 1 though. ha ha
it is really easy to buy the DVDs here because everything is pirated. it is a common sight to see someone filming the screen in a theater. its kind of hard to get used to. every thing is all protected in America and stuff.
any way back to church. the old building is all bare now and all the air conditioning units are out all ready. really weird.
did I tell you that I was in after school band. anyway I am and it is pretty fun. I play the cowbell. I dream of being a world famous cowbell player and winning billions of academy awards for my acting as a cowbell.
that was irrelevant.

earthquake

Oh my goodness there was an earthquake. It was so cool... I was shaking and my mom said "um we should probably get under cover"... ha ha:) thankfully I don't think anyone was hurt.
anyway, I have had a great first few weeks of school but i have to write an essay in humanities and I have a poster due tomorrow about polyethylene which is the most common plastic in the world. it makes things from shopping bags to bullet proof vests.I bet you really needed to know that.:) Haha.
Candace is here and we have had a blast . when my dad went to have his surgery on his shoulder we watched a bunch of movies. last night a bunch of ladies were here so I was the official photographer and now know that my specialty is awkward shots. haha.
I cant wait until this quarter finishes. it is a short quarter so i think that I will have a lot of fun in jogja at language shool. NOT!!! I am soooo dreading it and I almost wish it would close down from some sort of natural disaster.
anyway I have officially discovered the office. the steve carrel office not some random office at the school or something. that would be weird. it is so funny. we watch it al the time as a family now and it is hilarious.
anyway see you all later
matthew

first few weeks of school

hey long time no blog. i have been having a good first few weeks of school and it has been really fun with my new class. we have 3 new people in our class and they are all girls. my homeroom teacher is mr gary and ibu joceline is his assistant thing. school is really fun except for B.I. with ibu lea. she is making us speak only bahasa and it is really annoying >:( at first I really didnt like mr vincent but after a while he got ok I guess. in pe we are doing ppractice rounds for track and peild day and i cant wait for it. for the first break we are going to one of those language course thngos and I really dont want to go. i wonder what non life threatening illness will keep you in bed for two weeks? :P
sry about the short post got to go
matt

news.

well today i found out who i am in class with. none of my friends except Eric. it stinks. well i am exited about this year and cant wait for it to start. it wont be as fun without everybody from last year. still i guess i have to accept that and suck it up. and pray that they make last minute changes. my homeroom teachers are Mr Gary and ibu Joceline. i don't know any body in my class except Eric Christie and Jessica so it will be hard to get used to it. if any body heard about the bombing in Jakarta don't worry or anything. it is just bad publicity. I mean what do you know about Indonesia except that there were a bunch of bombings and a tsunami along with the most amount of volcano's in one country. and i live here.

anyway i have a bunch of exciting or not so exciting hobbies: photography, watercolour and modeling (not the wear something outrageously silly and say it is the new fashion but making planes out of plastic and gluing them together)ha ha! I have also decided to become a teacher. i don't really know why but I would like to teach history in some remote extremely preppy private school.

well i guess i gave up on bali yet again!

any way.... summer has been cool. not cold cool cuz its actually been reallyhot but like more of a radical cool... any way my mom has started to wake me up before 9! its horrible! I cant wait until summer next year because i will finally be coming back to canada. cant wait it will be so fun. since bali i have had a lot of interesting experiences. our family bought an airmatress and we play this game<> to see who can stay on the airmatress the longest. its super awesome. we also have a lime tree! and me and my sister each have our own bushes and it is super awesome. we have to trim them and stuff. mine is so much better than abbys. we also built this thing in our back yard that is to prevent mud from splashing our deck thing. SO we dug a atrench thing and filled it with bricks so that the rocks that cover the mud are all enclosed in a sort of cage..
after we were finished with that our driver started to bring us rocks but only a little at a time because he only has a little scooter.
the other day my mom wanted some papers to be burnt and so abby and i decided to go burn them where the rocks were.then abby found some sticks and we carved them so that they had sharp ends and we roasted marsh mellows over the fire. we have this big thing full of cardboard so we didnt have any trouble with the fire going down until we were done with it.
btw did i tell you our air mattress has a hole in it now. its horrible. but thankfully we bought some stuff to patch it with.
another exciting thing that happened last wednesday was that the new people came! we are hosting one family who have a 6 year old son who live right down the street. their last name is boldosser. it looks like their name is bulldozer but do not call them that!hahah. it is pronounced balldasser. mr james is going to teach grade 6 and lives in the same house that abbys last teacher lived in. it would be really ironic if this guy was abbys teacher this year.
any way I cant think of any thing to write about or anything so see ya later.

bali (again)

for the past 3 weeks I have been in Bali! it is totally awesome! I went to 4 different hotels in 4 very different places. one was on an extremely busy surfing beach that I absolutely love and where I learned to body board. the second place was on an island called lembongan. it is an hours boat ride from Bali and was really cool. it is really good for snorkeling and body boarding without the bustle of legian (the first place that I went)the 3rd place was in a little town called amed which is very non touristy. it was more like a fishing village with a lot of little villas where people can stay. we stayed at this one place that was run by this lady that bought it when the rupiah doubled or something and so she bought this place in legian and turned it into a hotel. it was very much made for older people who wanted quiet. this place had some really good snorkeling. the next place we went was in an island attached to the mainland sort of like Granville island in Vancouver. its called nusa dua. this place was very busy and we ended up going to legian and a place where our friends were staying that was also in nusa dua called the novotel. this place wass really good for sitting and getting burnt. more detail later with more pics:) ttys
matt

baddish week

wow I havent blogged in awhile
well I guess i will just talk about the time that I havent blogged. this past week has been super boring and i am actually missing homework. it is really starting to scare me. well moving on: their are a bunch of teachers leaving this year and I didnt get to say goodbye to a bunch of them. BTW school went out this thursday and report cards were due from the teachers last friday so we were very bored this week with no homework and really nothing to do at all.
this tuesday we had a quiz on statistics and we were all wondering how the teacher would change the grade on the report cards. this seemed a bit suspicious... I mean how is he supposed to get into the computer after they have been shut down and then get into the report card things after they have been sent to the peoples houses. really wierd. any way this monday we went to this waterpark that has this really cool slide called the hairpin. you have a tube with 4 people that goes down a realy steep sloping slide. some people go backwards because you face each other (its circlular)
I also hit my head on the way down and i have a goose egg the size of a goose egg that wont go away.
this wednesday we had a party in evryclass and on thursday I learned how to play the trumpert... my first song (which i composed but my friends named) is death by trumpet... hehehe BTW i was being sarcastic. if sounds could kill every body in that room would be dead about now.
on thursday we had a deeper concert which is like a worship thing with a message that the school puts on... after that I went with eric and andre to carls house for a sleep over. haddon was supposed to come but he decided he was "busy" and that he had company... my friends and I are being a little put off because he does this all the time. he puts nothing into a relationship. the next day we went to the mall for a movie with my homeroom (7.4) and we saw him there. that was again really annoying because we had gone to his house earlier that day and he ahad been all snarky and told us "to just leave and not come back". we saw him with kids from another class which put us off even more because this was supposed to be a class party thing where we all went to the mall and had fun.
I think that I will stop ranting about haddon now.
any way this week has been not too great other that going out of school...
see ya

schoooools out for the summer! (well... almost)

ahhh... I cant wait for summer break and a party in practically every class! woot woot.
and I am going to Bali for 3 weeks with the Comries and we are going to one of the best snorkeling places that they have ever been to and they have lived here almost 15 years. the grad ceremony for our grade 12s was today and while that was happening I was upstairs reading lord of the rings about to be interrupted by a worker/cleaner upper who wanted to talk with a bule (pronounced boolay) we had a really interesting chat bout his dead mother father and grandmother in a language that i do not totally understand. in fact I rarely understand any thing people are saying and if there isn't a translator I am completely lost. i have to admit my BI is getting a bit better but not enough for a 'civilized' conversation. i have a feeling that i sounded like a cave man. eg: indo guy: this is my dead father mother and grandmother
me: they been dead 3 years ya?
indo guy: no all three of them have been dead for 10 years.
me: ooohhh... so they been dead 10 years
indo guy: yes
i had no idea what i was even saying... really embarrassing. ANYway the grad ceremony sounded really cool. all the girls were in traditional batik and they had this lacy thing over it and the guys had batik shirts with black pants.
back to the conversation between the indo guy and me... i really didnt want to be talking to him... for me reading takes priority over learning some lost language that a 200 or so million people speak. learning what graduation means in indonesian is not my idea of fun. and my sntence structure was probably way worse that that ... instead of saying'they been dead 10 years' I probably blurted 'ten years????' with a nervous laugh/smile that makes me look like i want to run away.

got to go wash dishes... BORING!!!
see ya
matt

no mrs o is leaving tomorrow!!!!:( it has been really fun while she has been here and I am going to put a few pictures on here that will help her to remember this visit...

mrs dale just said that if they are "icky" she is going to take them off so i made sure that I dont have "icky" pictures

more pics...

here are some ore of my pictures all the way from indo!... umm moving on

this first picture is of my family in front of Borobudur: one of the ancient wonders of the world. it is the biggest Buddhist temple in the world and it was really really cool.

this is mister Poindexter or mister P and every body else calls him. in my opinion he is like ... the coolest teacher ever other than my dad. anyway this is another picture from the soccer carnival. he is dressed in a bunch of green for the absolute best house team ever.... Merapi Raptors.

this is a picture of the weeda kids and me and Abby jumping into a pool inalt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5341501664887708802" /> Jogjakarta, a city in central java. the pool was really nice and we all had a blast while in Jogja. Borobudur is also in Jogja and we went there while in Jogjakarta....

pics

Tell i thought that it was bout time that I posted pictures again on my blog so here it goes...
This is me and my friend Eric at our soccer carnival. He is a person who really does not like his picture taken and as you can tell by the expression on his face he really doesn't want his picture taken now. as you can see I am a poser .. always was always will be! whenever we have a house team competition I always get very team spiritish and go all the way when it comes to face, leg, hair and arm painting as well as a house team colour shirt....
the next picture is of my friend Haddon and Carl. Carl is trying to strangle haddon and haddon is sitting there calling Carl a weirdo haddon is blocking carls hands around his neck and it looks like carl is a bit slow...

more pics later...

hahaha I am in school and on my blog ... my friend Haddon is right beside me and he has something to say to all you people out there who read his blog Haddon:"only people with odd medical conditions use blogger".... umm thank you Haddon for that very irrelevant piece of advice... umm...OK then. I think this is seriously the most boring computer tech class that I have ever had with pak dito. people are starting to play pinball. ugh... I am so bored right now. ezra:" sorry matthew I have nothing to say right now. I'm sorry" ... again i have no idea what he means by that. these peopl are sooooo wierd...

the past week

ill start with last Saturday so it is exactly a week.
last Saturday I went to my sisters basket ball game where I met my friend andre and he talked me into going to x men so I then asked my parents and they said I could so I borrowed money off of them(hehe) and went home had a shower watched Shaun the sheep with my friend and waited to be picked up for the movie at his house. me and my friends decided to walk around the mall until the movie started and then it started ... when it finished we had heard there was this really cool part when wolvrine does something at the end of the redits but that really didnt happen.. also I have this nick name now that people call me... popcorn butt. haha. its because pick up too much popcorn in one hand and it all falls onto my lap unto i have little popcorn kernals sticking to every surface of my clothing. also my seat is covered... oh well. after that I went to church and then went to this place called izzys pizza where I had the closest thing to Canadian ice tea in indonesia. on sunday i sat around reading and watching little house o the prairie(awesome... were on season 6 !!!) at 4 i went to ultimate frisbee nd I was o mr bruces team this time! sadly we lost really really badly and it didnt really work out too well. on monday I wnet to school had dance and came home to eat and read. tuesday was really fun because we went to community and sevice at the bintaro slums and we had this really yummy fried rice.. wednesday was really just a normal day and I didnt do much then I watched american I dol and I thought kris did the best. thursday I didnt do very much again and the I watched american idol. yay Kris.haha. on Friday I went to immigration and I got to miss math and science along with gymnastics. it was really boring. I mean really boring we sat there for 45 min. wait ing for the people to find our information. and that is really all I did
see ya

sunday to wednesday

this sunday when i went to play ultimate frisbee!! not much is new except for the fact that it was raining... It was awesome. we all got soaked to the bone and my school shoes were so wet I think a frog could have lived in them! our team lost by at least 10. not too good on our part but o well. after wards we went to my house and we all ordered pizza (after showering of course) from pizza hut. then we played killer uno which is like uno only if you play a 1 you pass your cards to the left of you... and if you play a 9 it is like a snap and last person to have their honds on the pile has to pick up 2. then we played taboo and my team lost again. i guess it just wasnt my night.

on Monday i didn't do much except for walk around in soggy shoes and then after school i went shopping and got some converse all stars! i am so excited to wear them somewhere!!! i also got these new shorts. I wanted to get ones with pinstripes but they were too bug:(. I love living in a place with outlet malls! any wauy i had a lot of fun. on tuesday i pretty much did nothing too.
today i went to school had humanities got my quiz back went to tech found out all my work was erased and had to restart my project went to english and wrote a poem had break went to bahasa got sent out of the class for whistling with two friends went to ensemble where this kid kept on asking really wierd questions then i went to bib studies and found out my teacher had "gastral problems". then my vice-principal subbed and we had to write a one page summary about 1 timothy 1-6!
then i came home got changed ate lunch and went on faceboook and hotmail played on my ds for about an hour and came to blog while waiting for american idol(go Chris and Allison!!!!!)

stuff

a few weeks ago I got my report card because it was the end of term 3. it was ok I did not get any 7's (which is the equivalent to an A only in IB) but it was still good. have I ever told you about asian learning habits. well first its mostly koreans but their are some other countrys that do it too. they have at least one lesson every day and then they stay up until about 1 in the morning studying! personally I think that they go over the top a little . also they ground their kids if they gt any thing under a B!!!! I think that is really unfair and I am pretty sure I know a lot of people who live in canada who wouldnt even be allowed out of the house. my mom has a funny story about my parent teacher conferences. she went up to my socials / english teacher and my teacher was about to speak when my mom said 'wait... your going to tell me that Matthew is a very good student who works well but needs to be neater and to stop talking in class out of turn. ' then my teacher said that my mom pretty much just read her mind.

have i ever told you about how hot it is here? seriously the saying no sweat really has no meaning here! you walk out side and you sit down and a minute later you realize that you are all wet and soggy! then think of running the 1600 meter on a sunny day!
see ya

people never really think of ultimate Frisbee as and intense sport but it IS!!! i cant believe haw competitive some teachers are... my friend was tackled by a business teacher for cryin' out loud! and i wasn't on Mr Bruce's team... again! but we still won and i am happy:) and i slid into something for the first time in my life! it seemed a bit odd because i wasn't used to it but it was freakin' awesome! also we are starting softball in PE and my house team won!!! we only played one inning so it was a bit strange but we still won 6-4. and I am hearing good news about the canucks ! Ii just hope they can keep this streak up and win the cup!haha I rhymed! up and cup! get it .... oh well. oh ya ... i did my speech and I seriously think that i am the worst speech giver outer in my class! i pretty much said ummm... for 2 minutes and 21 seconds of torture!I am also learning how to be one of those people who make comercials or websites! well... not really but i like to think that i am. we are doing a unit on flash player in computer tech. and its really fun. we have to make an 'animation' about math that a 3 year old would understand. mine is based on star wars... haha.
well gtg
matt

aaaaaaaaaaaaa

eekkkkkkkk....!!!!! I have to do an impromptu speech and I dont even know when I am doing it

my teacher is going to give me a topic and then i have about ten minutes to make an outline for my speech.. i must admit that it is a lot more fun doing it totally spontaneously and not really knowing what is going to happen... it is still not a nice thought though. well, now what to blog about? lately every thing has been really unexciting in indonesia.. not much has really happened. oh ya ... I am in hip hop again!!! it is sooo awesome. except for the fact that i am the only boy and i will probably get teased for it... i have a reputation of hanging out with girls a lot but i look at it in another way... i am the only person who will know enough girls so when i start dating i will pretty much have first dibs(now, if i can only make the girls agree with me!!) another thing... we only had 2 weeks to make up a dance AND perfect it in time for this tuesday!
ttyl

ultimate

today we played ultimate again! it was awesome. except some of the people that are better at it didn't show but a bunch of new people came.i think all of us had a blast. Sophie and i made sure that we were on the same team cause last time we did awesome together. sadly y team lost badly. i really need to get on the same team as Mr Bruce next time. he is our PE coordinator/gym teacher. it was the first time for my friend Haddon who i convinced to come. he is freaking good at pretty much any sport that comes his way. sometimes it can get a bit annoying... oh well. well enough about ultimate. I am doing this science project for science (funny how that happens isn't it... a science project for science). i have to make a magazine about a medical instrument that uses either light or sound to treat or diagnose an illness, i chose ultrasound...
well more about that later
see ya
Matt

my speech day moments

on Monday the 13 of April we went back to school... it was OK i guess ... until English class! that was the day that I did my speech (you know that one I posted on the blog a few weeks ago). for one thing I am student president in English and i have to announce everybody's speeches and ! pray in public! which is something I really need to work on... well I announced everybody except for the third person. suddenly I realized i was next!!!! personally my worst fears are heights and public speaking (which doesn't seem like me until you hear me actually DO my speech). it was seriously pure torture.. my legs were shaking and I have a feeling no one could actually hear me speak I was going so fast... well any way I did not have a fun time while I was presenting. afterward it was fine... all you had to do was answer a few questions that the "evaluator" asked you and you were done. oh ya one of my friends forgot the paper that had his speech on it and did his totally impromptu:P me and my friend (the vice-president a.k.a Haddon) couldn't stop laughing... his evaluator thought he had just memorized his speech and one of his positives was " I liked the way you memorized your speech... did you just memorize the main ideas or the whole speech" btw the person who said that is one of those people who is always clueless about what is going on around him... it is really funny.

wednesdays

I really like Wednesdays. I think they have always been my favorite days. in Canada we had music and youth group and in indo its a short day. also we don't have math and science. there is only one bad class... bahasa indonesia...(I hate that language... I know i shouldn't hate things but if you knew what it was like you probably would to:()

my favorite classes are all on that day except for art. we have English, Tech, Humanities,Break, then its Bahasa (ugh), Ensemble(a sort of music class), and then Biblical Studies. afterward at 7 00 I watch American Idol!

gtg
Matt

nyepi holiday

last weekend we had a 4 day long weekend. that was because of a Buddhist holiday called nyepi. it was Thursday to Friday and I had a blast. on Thursday I watched American Idol and played a game of ultimate Frisbee with a bunch of teachers:P I was with my friend Eric and we plan to do this weekly! I mean playing Frisbee not watching American Idol... even though I watch American Idol weekly too.... never mind. it was a lot of fun and my team won because of my awesome cherry picking... I think that is allowed in ultimate Frisbee though. on Friday it was a really lazy day and i stayed home and read all day. it was kind of boring but it isn't like i didn't try to do something else but of the 2 people I asked to do something one couldn't find his parents and one was in puncak. weird. that night i went over to the Comries house and Sophie Abby Ben and i went swimming and ordered pizza before watching Michael Sarvers get voted off American Idol (should have been Scott). the next morning I probably was on the computer playing games before anyone else was awake but afterwards I was... still on the computer playing games because that is what I did all day. at about 4 o'clock I went to church with the Comries and then we went to chili's for dinner and I shared a massive plate of chips in cheese sauce before going home and seeping. on Sunday i slept in and went swimming with Eric and then Eric my family and his family went to play soccer with about 11 kids who are in Jakarta to get a proper education from papua new guinea
that pretty much sums up what I did this weekend and every weekend for thaat matter...
ttyl
matt

filling in the gaps part 2

well i guess i should start where I left off...

this Christmas i went to puncak with my family and a family from the school, the weedas. It was really fun and I got to pet an elephant and i went to my first really big outlet store. it is about an hours drive from Jakarta and it is up in the mountains(that is what puncak means ... mountain). it was my first cold experience in Indonesia except for air conditioning. the pool at the place where we stayed was probably the coldest water i have aver been in! that is really weird since i used to live in Canada... oh well. on our second day we packed up and went to a zoo called Taman Safari. you drive through a park and get to feed animals like giraffes and zebras. they also have a big cat thing that you weren't allowed to feed the animals but you had to look at them with your windows closed... it was still fun though. there was a place that you could go up to elephants and pet them and stuff. you could also feed them and they could trumpet in your ear ... i didn't try that. there was a bird exhibit and I tried to touch a pelican and it bit me:P. i guess i learned my lesson... i haven't touched a pelican since. one of my favorite animals was the red panda . it looks just like a raccoon but it is red:0

bye bye

filling in the gaps

hey i am going to start blogging again and we will see how long this goes for:)
well since I have blogged last i have turned 13, been to lombok, anyer, and puncak, and am going to Bali again this summer... firstly when i went to lombok I went with my grandparents and we had a blast. It was a 2 1/2 hour plane ride to lombok and we stayed a the jayakarta. it was not an extremely nice hotel but the pool was good and now we know from experience not to go to the jayakarta agoain. for one thing my mom and dad and both of my grandparents got really sick and my dad had to miss Christmas morning because he was throwing up:( secondly the service was horrible and when we came we had ordered 2 rooms with 2 beds and when we came we got one room with a queen sized bed and one with 2 twins we weren't too sure how we were going to fit 6 people into one queen and 2 twins so we eventually got another room. one day while we were in lombok we drove down to the south end of the island and went to a fancy hotel and had lunch. we asked to use their beach and one person said yes and one person said no and we were all confused and decided just to find another beach. we drove down the road a while and found a little beach with a few fisherman and a really pretty view so we stopped there and snorkeled and got tanned (or burnt, whichever you decide to call it).

in school we go on retreats and in grade 7 you go to a place in northern java called anyer. we went to a hotel and i cant actually remember what it is called but it was really fun. we played games in our house teams and had a lot of fun doing skits and stuff in the chapels. my favorite thing was the night game when we played capture the flag. on the last day of our retreat a bunch of people were sick and a few of them puked during devotions. when it was time to leave nobody could find them and eventually they were in one of the villas where they had crashed.

my sister wants to use the computer now so i will do some more filling of gaps later on

my essay!

wow this is weird blogging again after about 5 months but here it goes.

i am writing an essay for school an presenting it in front of my class and i was wanting to put it on my blog so here you are

Speech #1 “all about me”

Indonesia. America. Mexico. Some of these seem close to home, some seem exotic, but none of us ever have the same experiences when we visit different cities. I would like to tell you all about my trips I have taken during my life. From when I went to Atlanta, Georgia, to when I went to California and, finally, the land of eternal summer, Indonesia.

One time, when I was 8 months old I went to Atlanta, Georgia, because my parents were leaders in a YWAM sort of camp. People were there from all over the world : Africa, Hawaii, Korea, and North America. I interviewed my parents about it and they told me “we camped on a dusty campground with a bunch of spoiled Korean kids”. There was on day when all of the different cultures did a special dance and sold traditional clothing and instruments. I don’t remember any of this but I have a lot of cool pictures.

Another time when I was 1 year old I travelled down the Oregon coast to go camping with my aunt and uncle, my cousin, and my parents. My cousin Angeline and I were apparently great except for an incident on the way back. We were at a restaurant and my cousin and I were stabbing each other with forks. My mom and my uncle had gone to the bathroom while my dad and my aunt were sitting at the table wishing they were somewhere else. Eventually it got so bad that my aunt said in a loud voice so that everyone could hear “this is the last time we are taking auntie jenny’s kids out ever the funny thing about that is that is that my auntie jenny wasn’t even married yet let alone having kids. I don’t remember any of these trips but they have good stories and I like them.

Did you ever go on any big trips when you were in junior school? I sure did! For example, my first big trip was when I went to California Disney land. Did you know that 25% of our class’ favorite ride is the Hollywood tower of terror? I didn’t! One very special thing about this trip was that this was the first time in about nine years that I had been on a plane. I was in Disney land with my cousins and my grandma and grandpa, which made this trip a lot more fun. One time we all went to a restaurant called the rainforest café. The next day almost all of us were sick. On the way back from the restaurant threw up (blech) on a lady’s shoe yikes! Thank goodness she was a nice lady! I think that was one of the funnest trips that I have ever been on.

Secondly, when I was in 5^th grade I went to Mexico. It was on a mission’s trip that my parents were organizing. We drove down to Mexico via Washington, Oregon, and California. That was defiantly the longest car ride I have ever taken. We drove in two 15 seater vans and, in California we picked up our friend Arturo. We stayed overnight at his house and got to see his pomegranate tree. The next morning we drove to Tijuana where we met up with the missionary’s with whom we were doing the project. We drove down to a little town called Punta Colonet which is on the west coast f the Baja. That is where we stayed. One day we went to a drug rehab centre and played baseball with the ex druggies. Afterwards we went to a beach and I saw a flock of pelicans passing by. On the way back, on the Canadian American border Arturo didn’t have the proper paper work to get back into the country so he had to stay and get his visa. We were all really worried but in the end he got in fine. Those were some of my favorite trips that I have been on.

Have you ever taken a life changing trip that you will never forget? Well I am going to tell you about mine and then some. When my family moved from Canada to Indonesia we had an eight hour layover in San Francisco. While we were there, we were really tired and had to sleep on the floor of the airport. I think it was one of the most boring times of my life. Later, on the plane, I slept for a third of th ride but when I woke up I ended up just watching movies. In the last half hour of the flight my mom started talking to the family in front of us. It turned out they were also going to teach at SPH. It was the Weeda’s. During our 36 hour layover in Singapore, Eric and I started talking and learned a bunch about each other. Also we were acting as tourists and did almost everything we could do in that period of time

My favorite vacation in Indonesia was probably when I went to Puncak during the Christmas holidays with my parent, my grandparents, Eric’s family, his grandparents and Mr. Poindexter. We stayed at the Riady’s house. Afterwards we went to and outlet mall and then tried out the pool at the Riady’s. It was so cold! Even for me it was cold. And I come from Canada! After that we watched napoleon dynamite and it seemed a lot funnier. The reason for this was that the subtitles on were saying something about soybean cakes. Finally on the second day we packed up and went to Taman safari where an elephant almost steped on my hand!

I hope you have enjoyed my adventures. From Atlanta to Indonesia they were all really exciting. I have told you about my trips as a baby, while I was in junior school and to when I moved to Indonesia. Have you ever had any cool trips? Thanks for listening.

well there it is hpe you enjoyed it...
(if i am presenting this isnt this a speech?)