My Spring Break

Hmm. Well. Another blog post about my vacation. I was looking forward to spending time with friends. I really needed to use this vacation with STAR testing coming right up around the corner. But, I did not get to spend time with friends. I will not bitch about it (because I feel that I bitch about my vacations way too much and it makes my dad sad). My family and I went on an RV trip for this spring break. My dad rented one at some place near Oakland. The RV was pretty nice. It had a toilet, a shower, a microwave, a stove, a ton of cabinets, and a few areas that could be used for sleeping. This one was not even worn down at all. It looked as if it were brand new. We used it for nearly the whole vacation. We got back in town on the second to last day (Saturday) right before my siblings and I would have to return back to school. A place that we love so dearly (SARCASM).

I am not going to lie, the first four days of the vacation were spent really well. It was the segment of the trip that we spent heading towards our destination. On the first day, I got out of school around lunch time. My parents had me excused from my last two classes so we could load up the RV and hit the road before traffic appeared. The first stop on the trip was a place called Tulare. We checked into the RV place first to get a space to stay. After that my family and I met up with my God Father. I was so happy when I saw him. I remember the last time we met I was only six pears old and my greatest passion in the world belonged to dinosaurs. We all went to a diner to eat and catch up with each other. After that, my God Father, my brother, and I went to go see Clash of the Titans. It was an alright movie. After that my God Father dropped my brother and I off at the RV park. That day was obviously the highlight of my trip.

The next three good days were spent in Las Vegas. My family and I went to meet with an uncle on my mom's side of the family. It has been a while since I saw him too. He moved to Nevada a few years ago with his family and they are doing quite well. I am going to try to just summarize up the majority of what occurred on these three days because a lot of the time was used on driving for long hours. We got to Las Vegas, checked into an Oasis RV park. It was pleasant area. The next day was Easter Sunday. We attended my uncle's church. I will say that this was quite a different religious experience for me. My mother said that they used the King James Bible rather than the New American Bible that my church back home uses. That was a small contribution to the different experience. My brother and I took a part in the highly successful youth group that they have. It was a while since we have gone to a CCD class, so we were prepared for nearly anything. To my surprise, we got to attend a small rock concert in the name of Jesus Christ. After that the youth group took us to talk about Jesus and why him rising from the grave was the key to sparking Christianity.
The differences in the Bibles were not that great. But what I found interesting was the fact that they believed that Jesus was dragged down and tortured in Hell for three days after his death. On the third day, he took back the keys to life and death, and returned to the human world to tell his apostles. This was the only difference that I heard from the story that I was told as a small child.

The next good day was the last one. We drove to Zion (some sort of National Park a lot like Yosemite). I climbed a really tall mountain that only had chains on the sides to help people. There were a lot of huge (approximately 1,000ft.) drops. The view was fantastic, but I did not enjoy it much due to my fear of heights. After that day, we started the "homecoming" part. I hated it. The worse part was the fact that when we got back to Alameda, all the good weather that they supposedly had was gone. It rained on the last two days and I was pissed. Oh well.

Movie Review: The Lightning Thief

Well. What can I say about this movie? I guess that it was alright. To be honest, I would have to say the book was ten times better than that movie. The first book was one of the longest from the series, so I have to give some credit to the directors for being able to squeeze such a big plot into a two hour film. Now, where shall I begin? Hmm. I will start from the first time I ever witnessed the trailer for the movie. I was with a few friends watching the recent Harry Potter film. The trailers for upcoming movies were playing, and all I saw was a boy standing on the Empire State Building, looking up at a path to a shining city or temple of some sort. At that exact moment, I knew that I was soon going to be upset, but I was never really sure why. Probably fact that filthy rich directors were going to tear apart a book series that meant so much to me and just continue on with their life.

Now, I will begin to talk about the actual movie. It somewhat kept to the plot of the book. The movie had Greek gods, a dyslexic and ADHD Percy Jackson, and a lightning thief. These are the majority of key points that the movie included. I was a bit upset that the acting was a bit "cheesy" and over-dramatic at some times, but a lot of the lead roles were played by new actors. The movie did not include a lot of monsters that I really looked forward to seeing, such as Cerberus and the Chimera. It also did not include the actual character who stole Zeus's master bolt. People in the audience that were watching the movie even got confused from time to time. In order obtain a well understanding of the film, I highly recommend that one should read the book or look into Greek mythology so that they will not get lost in the plot while watching. But, if they read the book, they might end up disappointed (like me) because of how much of the actual characters and story was changed.

Reading

I haven't really been reading on my spare time lately. I believe that due to having harder classes, I usually spend all of my free time with my friends and/or family trying to relax. Due to not reading as much as I did before, I am starting to read slower and become a worse speller. I guess that reading actually is good for your intelligence. Recently, I have not found a "high school reading level" book or series that I have been interested in. I was never really a fan of the Harry Potter book series. I had a bad experience with the first book as a child. Now I just watch the movies instead of reading the books. I kind of gave up on anime and comics. I use to be obsessed with buying the anime books of the Naruto series, but then I slowly drifted away from it. I still read comics a bit whenever I see some at a friend's house or just the ones in the Sunday paper.

The only kind of book series that I really enjoyed reading was the Perseus Jackson and the Olympians. All of my teachers declared it a "middle school reading level" book. I may be in high school, but I still enjoyed reading it. The way that the author, Rick Riordan, incorporates Greek mythology (with all of its violent and action-filled stories) with our current society turns out to be really appealing to a young teenage boy. I can tell that I really liked reading the books because I would sit in the same spot for hours a day reading just to find out what would happen next. Also, whenever I find the topic of something I read interesting, I read a larger amount faster than when I read when I am bored. I fell in love with the series by the time I had gotten to the seventh chapter of the first book. Unfortunately, the first series is over, and it will probably be a while until Riordan can get another one started. Also, I am now in high school, where teachers don't want their students reading "middle school books." So hopefully, I can become interested in another series/author, maybe a young adult one of some sort. But, their is still no denying the child in me the right to read and explore my unstoppable imagination.