Eggs, Eggs and more Eggs!

Hey there, guess what? Easter is this weekend!, but I am sure all of you knew that, ha.
Something that my family loves to do for Easter is make colorful Easter egg.
Here are the steps on how to make an Easter egg:
Items:
Eggs
Paint
Paint brushes
Newspaper 
The Actual Steps:

1. Hard boil the eggs
2. Use blown eggs (to be able to keep your creations forever):
   1. Poke a small hole at each end of the egg
   2. Break up the yolk inside with a sharp object
   3. Gently blow into one end of the egg to allow its contents to come out; you can use:
   4. Wash the inside of the egg out with water
   5. Let the egg dry for a little bit
   6. Start paintint!
   7. Let it dry for a while
     And there you go! Your end result is a colorful Easter Egg!
   I sure hope your egg turned out looking better then mine did!

This is a cool looking Easter Egg:(photo taken from here)
-MP

Happy Earth Day

Today, April 22nd, is Earth Day. This holiday originated in 1977 and has been held on every April 22nd since. It is now celebrated in more than 150 countries worldwide. The point of it is to create awareness and inspire action to protect Earth, as well as to just celebrate nature.

There's an endless array of possibilities for how you could spend your Earth Day honoring our planet. Here are just a few.

-Plant a tree
-Or just plant some plants
-Cut down on the animal products you consume. You don't have to go vegan, or even vegetarian, but just eating a little less could make all the difference
-Speaking of food...try buying more local things. Farmer's market, anyone?
-Turn off the lights when you leave a room
-Donate money to environment causes
-Pick trash somewhere outside, like a park
-Ride your bike or walk somewhere (or take the bus!) instead of using a polluting car
-Recycle things (that's what those big blue bins are for :P)
-Just spend time outside, enjoying nature. You could go outside and play soccer, or go swimming, or have a picnic with your friends or family (things that I would totally do if I wasn't sick right now...)

I could go on and on...there are lots of things you could do...but I'll spare you right now.

Also, if you have nothing better to do, you should take this quiz from the Earth Day website to find out about your personal environmental impact on the Earth. I took it, and let's just say I'm not as green as I could be... How green are you?

Plant a tree, like this one, planted a few years ago, and the tiny one behind it that we planted a few months ago. (It has leaves now!) 

Happy Earth Day, everyone!

-KG

The Beastie Boys are back

Yep. The Beastie Boys, one of hip-hop's most influential rap groups of all time, have just recently released a mini-movie that retells the musical history of the group. This will also be followed by their new album, which is set to be released on May 3rd of this year. The movie itself, named "Fight For Your Right Revisited," features a lot of well-known celebrities, like Jack Black and Will Ferrell.

The Beastie Boys themselves, and yes, they are white.

I know that most of the people who read this blog aren't really into hip-hop and rap, but I'm pretty interested in this. I always figured that the Beastie Boys had faded away from the hip-hop scene, like most of the other rappers and rap groups from the 80s, but apparently not. Looks like age means nothing to them, seeing as how they're all around 45 years old now. I can't wait to see how their new album turns out.

For anyone interested, see the mini-movie here.

-ACM

Bored

Ten ways you know some one is bored

1. They dont care what they do.
2.they appear quiet
3 their careless at times
4. their not engaged
5. they sleep
6. they say their bored "duhh"
7. they talk to other people instead
8. they have no life
9. they do their minimum
10. they lack energy

ack, feature leads

I'm not finished! Please excuse the mess that is my feature leads.

1. Compare//Contrast
For most Americans, a trip to a grocery store is nothing interesting. The same old aisles lined with flashy colored boxes of over-processed food don’t offer much in the ways of excitement. But for fourteen-year-old Clarissa T., who lives in Belgrade, Serbia,  the experience can be astounding.

“Walking into an American grocery store is mind-blowing for me,” Clarissa said. “There’s so many options, it’s insane!”

2. Descriptive-ish  
She’s lived in Washington D.C., Moscow, Berlin, San Francisco and now Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. She’s visited four continents and more countries than she can remember. She speaks two languages fluently and several others partially.


3. Narrative//Descriptive
Clarissa T. has moved countless times, from country to country, across continents. By now she's used to the flying, the packing, the different cultures. But there are some things that you never really get used to, like leaving the people you'll never see again.

-Kendall

Feature Story Leads- ACM

1. Lead #1 (Narrative)- Coach McNeil isn’t your average Geometry teacher. He’s far from it, actually. With 23 years of coaching experience, and many years of playing sports before that, sports have had a major influence in his life.
2. Lead #2 (Descriptive)- As he looks at his football team playing out in the field, Coach McNeil gets a look in his eyes that shows his passion for sports and also shows that he loves doing what he does.
3. Lead #3- “I spend part of my day, everyday, around sports, whether it be playing it or coaching it,” says Coach McNeil. “Honestly, I love sports. They allow you to learn things that you otherwise probably would have never learned.”

Little Miss Kickball Leads

“strike one, strike two, strike 3 kickers out” the umpire had called. As monesia slowly walked to the dug out in shame of letting her team down, she stumbled over a lost of hope. She just knew that she would be singled out by the best.


The  strive for success, the encouragement to do her best , as the time begins to narrow she kicks the dirt off the base  and stare into mid space. The cheers and laughter were great but it just may be too late.

"Whoa, i dont know if i want to go to the kickball game or run track... i'm confused on what to do."

Miguel P. Leads

Descriptive:
He started out as an average child. He owned a piano that he occasionally liked to bang on. The banging slowly evolved into an interest in playing piano. As a teenager, his stepfather’s best friend had inspired him to learn saxophone, which opened up many doors. Who is this man? None other then the LBJ Jazz Band Director, Ponder East.

Compare and Contrast: Being in a musical family, one is automatically signed up to play instruments and have some sort of talent. For some this might be an age full of misery, but or Ponder East it was what got him to where he is now. From a young age he learned how to bang the keys of a piano and make it sound, to him, that the angels were singing. He was no child prodigy, of course, but living in the shadow of musically inclined parents and enjoying it led him on the path of his choice career now.

Direct Quote:Some people might ask, “why bother teaching?” Ponder East replies with “I have gotten to be creative in ways that I don't think I would be able to be in another environment”. Ponder East is a person who followed there dreams and became a Jazz director at LBJ High School.

can you grow from sports???

Not physically but mentally, can you actually grow from playing sports??? yes you can i believe, when your playing a sport you gain the opportunity to learn how to work with others, to accept them for who they may be, to have fun, and to becaome active. I play two sports now and have been playing sports since i was the age of three, i have learned how to communicate betters with others and it has made me grow in a different yet original way. Now i know how to communicate better when im at school doing a project and/or when im getting interviewed by an individual the sports can help you grow and have fun doing what you love at the same time.

My interview experience

So this week, I had my interview for my feature story. The person that I decided to interview was Coach McNeil, who some of you may know as the Geometry teacher here at LASA. Overall, I think that my interviewing experience went well. I didn't really have much trouble trying to schedule a time to interview him, and there weren't really any awkward moments. I will admit though, that I was a bit sick during the interview, so I imagine that I sounded really unenthusiastic and also noticed that I had trouble trying to say what I wanted to ask. He was still able to understand what I was asking though, and gave some really good answers and quotes that I could use in writing my piece. My feature piece itself is going to be about him, and his experiences that he's had with sports throughout his entire life (he apparently has had a lot of experience, seeing as he's a coach here at the school). So, overall, I think the interview went pretty smoothly.

Also, just so that this post doesn't seem to boring, there was a man who drove around a car with some friends in New Mexico. Thing is, he apparently didn't know that one friend was dead the entire time, since he thought that she was just sleeping. His other friends in the car seemed to notice, but he didn't. That must've been awkward for his friends.

-ACM

Teens go gaga for Gaga

First of all, I would just like to talk about my interviewing experience for a little while. I interviewed the Jazz Band Director from LBJ, Mr. East. Band is one of my primary interests and it just made interviewing Mr. East even more fun. Getting a hold of Mr. East was difficult even if he does teach at the same school that I go to...It's difficult to get a hold of him mainly because he is always coming and leaving the school. When I had finally gotten a chance to interview Mr. East, the interview started a little awkward, but as we progressed through, the awkwardness slowly started going away. This whole process was actually pretty fun and I hope to do it again sometime in the future 

Secondly,
      My feature story is about the LBJ Jazz director and how he came to get his job at LBJ. My feature will be in a way, a sort of Biography of his musical life. Beginning from when he first started playing Piano as a child to now, where he performs at various places and still manages to teach and how he gets paid for doing something he truly loves to do.

Thirdly,
     Lady Gaga came into town yesterday (Wednesday April 6) and performed at the Frank Irwin Center. Isn't that pretty cool??? Although I was not able to attend the concert, I heard it was pretty awesome. As a matter of fact, I had completely forgotten she was going to perform here in Austin, until I realized late at night that the radio had been playing lots of songs by Lady Gaga. Born This Way being played about every 30 minutes or so along with some of her other top hits. It also helped that lots of people were posting it as there status on Facebook.

    What makes Lady Gage is pretty  much known for her wardrobe...and her very interesting...music videos. Each new video somehow manages to be even stranger then the last one that just came out. In my opinion, she's one of those artists' whose work is always being criticized, but I mean at least her songs in a way have messages in them and don't teach us about the week...shall I remind you about my "Friday" post?

That is in Fact Lady Gaga in an egg

-MP

my interviewing experience

This is a Post about my Feature Story Interviewing Experience. Don't let the capital letters fool you... It's really not all that exciting. In fact, it was pretty normal. I mean, I've interviewed people before for Newspaper so I knew what was going to happen. Plus this was someone I knew so that made it a lot easier.

I interviewed my cousin Clarissa. Clarissa and her family live in Belgrade, Serbia (a thousand points to you if you  know where that is... I didn't before they moved there). I thought it would be interesting to write my feature story about her experiences moving around a lot and living in a foreign country. She's lived in four different countries throughout her life (she's fourteen, my age) and visited upwards of 30 countries (she can't even remember). Anyway, she's pretty easy to contact and has a pretty interesting life so that is how I chose my topic.

I emailed her to ask if I could interview her and then I sent my questions.
She responded...from Poland.
And then the next day I asked her a few more questions.
And she responded....from Paris.

True story.

Anyway. This is probably already too long and ramble-y, so toodles!

~KRG