The Run at the Zoo

We arrived at the zoo for the 5k, and I saw crowds of people waiting to sign up to run. There were many people- serious runners warming up and stretching while drinking Gatorade, to young moms pushing their children around in strollers. The rest of my swim team pulled into the parking lot, and hopped out of their cars. Our coach, Jayme,  forced us all here instead of doing our normal Saturday morning practice of swimming. Jayme wanted us to look professional, so we were forced to warmup and stretch before the race. Some people were watching us, probably because we were a huge wad of matching black tank tops. We began our warmup, running around the parking lot. After a few minutes of dodging cars, we decided to stretch. We walked around, looking for an empty place in the parking lot where no cars would hit us. We found a place, but ten seconds after we got their, a man pulled up in a vehicle that looked like a monster truck. We thought it was best not to ask him to move, so we just dealt with it. After finishing our stretching, we walked from the parking lot into the zoo. The race was starting in 10 minutes, so we decided just to go look at the animals that were near the front of the zoo. Sadly, most of the cages were empty. We complained about not wanting to run, and considered to just get "lost" in the zoo and miss the race. Deciding that it would not go over very well with our coach if we missed it, we headed back out to the parking lot where the starting line was.

Reading Response

The next book I will be reading will be Hate List by Jennifer Brown. I chose this book because I want to know what drives people to do school shootings. I am curious about this because of all of the recent tragedies, and I want to know what encourages people to do such things.

I am choosing the book to answer my question because of the summary. It is about a girl whose boyfriend opens fire on their school cafeteria. Before he opened fire, together they made a list of people they hated. With this list, he targeted certain people to shoot. The girl had no idea that he would do this, and she feels very guilty. I think this will help me answer my question because a main part of the book is about her recovering from the tragedy. I hope this book will get into her thoughts about why she thought he did open fire.

8/20	Burn for Burn	Jenny Han and Siobhan Vivian	35 mins	141-190 49 total
8/21	Burn for Burn	Jenny Han and Siobhan Vivian	10 mins	191-203 12 pages
8/22	Burn for Burn	Jenny Han and Siobhan Vivian	20 mins	204-236 32 pages
8/23	Burn for Burn	Jenny Han and Siobhan Vivian	110 mins	237-358 121 pages

Reading Log Week 1

Date	Title	Author	Time Read	Pages Read
8/13	Burn for Burn	Jenny Han and Siobhan Vivian	25 mins	1-35 35 total
8/14	Preparation for choice summer reading project		30 mins
8/16	Burn for Burn	Jenny Han and Siobhan Vivian	35 mins	36-73 37 total
8/17	Burn for Burn	Jenny Han and Siobhan Vivian	30 mins	74-103 29 total
8/18	Burn for Burn	Jenny Han and Siobhan Vivian	35 mins	104-140 36 total

My Trip to Orlando

This past summer, my family and I took a trip to Orlando, Florida. The main reason we went was because I was competing in a swim meet, but we ended up staying for a few days after. We went to Disney World and Sea World in the four days we had, and it was very fun.

First off, we spent three of the four days we were there in Disney World. The first day we went to Magic Kingdom. Magic Kingdom is my favorite park because I love the atmosphere. All of the stores and landscaping are so beautiful. It makes you feel like you are in another world. I also really liked Animal Kingdom. I love roller coasters, so I rode Expedition Everest many times with my brother. Expedition Everest is a roller coaster with one huge drop and a ton of fast turns. This was my favorite ride at Disney World.

My family and I also spent a day in Sea World. We had never been to Sea World before, so everything was new to us. My brother and I rode two huge roller coasters called the Kracken and the Manta over and over again because we bought the bracelets that allowed you to skip the lines, so there was no wait at all. We ended up loving Sea World so much! I can't wait to go back to Orlando.

I was really surprised about how much I enjoyed The Knife of Never Letting Go. Honestly, I was dreading reading this book because I did not the like the summary on the back of the book. However, once I started to read it, I really enjoyed it. I loved how the book was written and I was very emotional during some parts of the book.

One of the parts that surprised me the most was when Manchee got killed. I was about to cry when I read the sentence saying that he was dead. The main reason why I was so sad was because Todd had just started to like Manchee. At the beginning of the book, Todd thought Manchee was annoying and he wanted to get rid of him. Todd had just started to appreciate Manchee and actually love him when he got killed. I thought it was so sad how Manchee was calling out to Todd asking him to save him because I felt like Manchee thought Todd was leaving him on purpose. Also, I felt so terrible for Todd because he felt like he let Manchee down.

I also thought it was very sweet how at the end of the story, when Viola got shot, how Todd desperately looks for help. He could not find any help, but he was doing all that he could to try to find a way to help Viola. I thought it was really interesting how at the beginning of the story how he was scared of her, but by the end she was basically all that mattered to him. This shows how their relationship developed over the story. I really loved The Knife of Never Letting Go, and I would really like to read the sequel.