My First Horseback Riding Experience

I mounted my horse. I was quivering, nervous. Why are you riding a horse? My inner-self inquired. You've never rode a horse before! What makes you think you can do it now? It condescended. Get off while you can! I shook my head. No! I yelled back. My inner-self shut up. I sighed thankfully. I picked up the reigns and fumbled with them. Finally I started to steer my horse to the arena. I took a deep breath. "Come on." I whispered in my horse's ear. They flicked back in acknowledgement. I walked about with the other riders. None of them acknowledged me. They know you're a newbie! They don't want anything to do with you! My inner-self yelled at me again. Shut up! I yelled back. It complied.

"Okay girls! Pick up the trot!" My trainer said cheerfully. What the heck is a trot? I asked myself. All the other girls started speeding their horses up and contorting their bodies into perfect poses. They praised their horses in high pitched voices. The trainer approached me and my horse where we were standing in the middle of the ring, watching the organized chaos. The trainer explained what a trot was and how to make your horse obey. I walked to the rail and clicked my tongue against the top of my mouth. You sound like an idiot! My mind screamed. Shut up! "Sit down, heels down, chin up, calves tight, elbows relaxed, wrists straight, fingers closed, backs arched, shoulders back," my trainer barked. All of the girls swirled around me and warped their bodies to flawless positions. To me, it just made them look like people with back problems. I, on the other hand, bounced on the back of my horse, just struggling to stay on. Horses twirled around me like a kaleidoscope of fur, dust, and hooves. Suddenly, time froze. All the horses stopped, the riders kept in position, and the dust settled. I stopped my horse by pulling back on the reigns like the other girls had. I almost ran into another horse in the process.

"Okay girls! Pick up the canter! Haley, your lesson is over." Sweat trickled down my neck. I walked down towards the barn. I felt dismissed, diminished, and flat out tired. I put my horse into the crossties. I slipped off the saddle and thumped to the ground. I leaned my head against my horses' face. See! I told you so! Was that really worth it? My inner-self yelled. Why did it always have to be so degrading? My horse snorted. I looked into her sweet brown eyes. Star was a perfect name for this little mare. I loved her name, it went with her face. She smelled like alfalfa and hay. I scratched lovingly at her little white mark on her forehead. It was shaped like a star. Her long black mane tickled my face. She blinked her long lashes and let me keep my face against hers. I felt a bond that possessed y heart my hazel eyes searched her amber ones.
Don't give up. They seemed to whisper. "I won't give up." I promised her vocally. These girls won't get the best of me, at least not yet. You know what? I'm never going to give up! You can throw all the problems you want at me, but they won't bring me down! Never, ever, ever in my entire life am I ever going to give up! I'm going to be one tough chick. I thought to myself. Bring it on!

Sensory Detail: Sound

http://margaretnoble.net/blog/choral_top/

A slow moan echoed through the room. Like a ghost from the ether. Crying for its past life and groaning at its future. It hummed as it walked among the fog between the earth and the netherworld. A sigh escaped its lips as it watched the beings living on the earth. Wishing it could join in on the fun yet again. As it travelled back to the ether, it pulled out a small violin. It placed the bow on the strings and played an eerie song. His master, Death, gladly accepted the ghostly creature in its tendrils of darkness once again. It continued to play as it entered the netherworld. It was a song that penetrated the heart with cold gloom. It came with a shock of beauty and solemness. But within the solemness, was a shockingly dark allure. This is the sound that pulls at the heart when Death seduces you with the kiss of death. It is a kiss that is never forgotten time and time again. This sound is the sound of death in a colorful spin.

The Mexican Whiteboy

Mexican Whiteboy

Black, complete black. I opened my eyes slowly and took in my surroundings. A total stranger was sitting by me in a pair of bright turqoise scrubs. To his left there was a girl in a long green skirt. I blinked several times. It was the girl. My girl! My chest tightened and my breath quickened. I heard a strange sound come from her. Clear rivers of saltwater tumbled from her brown eyes. I tried to move to comfort her, but realized couldn't. Lead was spread throughout my limbs and I couldn't move. I was strapped down to what felt like a table but I couldn't be sure. A table? Where am I? That's when I heard it. Sirens. Coming from where? I wondered. The terrible sound rang in my ears, mixed with my girl's crying.

Then bang! It hit me. I'm in an ambulance! I yelled silently. Uno sent me to the hospital! I heard another wail coming from behind me. Oh God. I thought. Uno's brother is in the other ambulance! What have I done? I moaned. My girl looked up from her crying and saw me, eyes open and groaning. She unclipped her seatbelt and dropped to her knees next to me. Her brown eyes searched mine desparately. "Chico? Tu estas no bueno. Sueno." she said. I smiled. What the heck did she just say? I wondered. She brushed my hair back from my face. Her fingers barely touched my cheek. The pain registered immediately. The pain! Oh God the pain! I grimaced and tried not to yell. She pulled back her hand immediately when she felt me tense. "Tu duele mucho. Lo siento." She climbed back into her seat and talked to the paramedic. He came over with something behind his back. He rolled up my sleeve and I felt a sharp prick. Suddenly the world faded to black and turquoise. The siren wailing stopped.

I felt myself being lift up, but I couldn't react. I felt like I was floating. Which I was for all I cared. I heard low mumbling and commands. "Can someone please bring me the sutures?" I heard an american doctor say. Sutures! How bad am I? I wondered. I felt the doctors cool hand, but not the needle that pierced my skin over and over again. I felt myself being lifted again and brought to a soft bed. The pillows felt like air on my cheeks. I succumbed to my need to sleep. I awoke a couple days later.

The Locker Problem

The Locker Problem

To know which lockers are opened and which are closed is all based on square roots and factors. Every number that has a perfect square root is open. For example, 49 is an open locker. This is an open locker because it is a square root number. The number 49 comes from 7 x 7 = 49. Just because the number 49 is a perfectly squared number does not mean taht there aren't other square root numbers in the Locker Problem. Within the first 100 lockers there are exactly 10 squared numbers. Those numbers are: 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81, and 100. Why? They are all like 49 where you find them by using the square roots. In the end, this leaves us with 31 open lockers and 969 closed lockers whcih make a total of 1000 lockers.

What do factors have to do with all of my shenanigans above? If you listed all the common facotrs of the square root numbers you could have an odd amount of factors. As an example, I will use my dear old 49 again. The number 49 has a total of 3 factors. Those factors are 1, 7, and 49. All of these numbers could translate into Open, Close, and finally Open. This is because the first person opened every single locker. This means that all the lockers' factors all have to start with a 1, which stands for Open. This can mean that every single squared number has an odd number of factors, including the number 1, the number that if they timed it by itself would become the squared number, and finally the squared number itself.

Included is a table of the first 20 lockers in the locker problem.

Order of Operations

My problems:

1. 3³ x 8(2) + 1 = ?

2. 3 x 2 + 1 / 7 = ?

3. 6 - 3 x 36 / 6 = 36

My Favorite Fictional Character

My favorite fictional character is Meggie (the girl reading the book) from the books Inkheart, Inkspell, and Inkdeath. In this book, Meggie is the daughter of a "silvertongue". A "silvertongue" is a person where if they read aloud, makes what they were reading come out of the book. The problem is that when something comes out of the book, something else has to go back in to replace it. So Mo (Meggie's dad and also the one holding the book with a serious look), one day, read his wife into the book by mistake. So, I think that Meggie is a very brave character because she is growing up without a mother and I think that is a very tough thing to go through. So soon, a person that Mo read out of a book called Inkheart, turns evil and wants to burn all of the Inkheart books because he likes this world so much. All of the copies are burned except one, which Mo miraculously discovers. They go on this huge adventure trying to escape Capricorn (the bald guy with the writing on his face).

In the second book (Inkspell), Meggie is so desparate to try to get her mother back that she reads herself into Inkheart to find her. When Mo figures out that Meggie has gone into the book, he follows her in. They soon get wrapped up in problems with an evil king within the book called the Adderhead. I think that Meggie was super brave in this book and I think that she symbolizes the stubbornness and rebellion of the typical female teenager.

Finally, in the third book (Inkdeath), Farid (Meggie's boyfriend from the book Arabian Nights) dies. Farid's firedancer/friend/tutor dies in his place. Meggie reads herself back into Inkheart to take Dustfinger (the firedancer guy who saved Farid) back from the dead. Apparently, in this book, it has been done before. In the end, Meggie breaks up with Farid, saves Dustfinger, and returns back home with a man (whom she later marries) who later created the idea of an airplane.

And all is happily ever after!

P.S. There is a movie made after the book (poster above)!

What is Math? What is Physics?

What is Math?
To me, math is not only a class where you learn about numbers, but a place where you can look at infinity just by looking at numbers. Pi, for example, is an example of math but it goes on forever and ever and ever and never ends! It is like a form of art that is extremely complex and only people like Einstein and Mele Sato (my Mysics teacher) can understand. I, unfortunately, am not gifted with the understanding of math so to me, math looks exactly like numbers on a page.

What is Physics?
Physics is a very complex form of math. I find it quite interesting that math can be put into many different forms and topics and still be numbers on a page. I also think that physics is the study of forces where you learn about gravity and other related topics. And like math, physics is a form of something amazing that can only be understood by certain people (cough cough Mele cough cough). And also like math, I do not quite understand the complexities of it.