We went to Universal Studios Japan in Osaka! It was one of many awesome activities over 2 weeks across the four cities we visited. We went on multiple rides that took forever to get through the lines. On a few of them we took the “singles” line which was faster and sometimes we still got to ride together. My favorite ride was Jurassic Park’s The Flying Dinosaur. It was super scary and I was shaking after the ride! We went to many shops which had a wide variety of things and we got some souvenirs. There are a few large themed areas within the park. We went to the Harry Potter world, Super Nintendo World, and a Minions one. I liked all of them. In the Harry Potter world, you got to walk through a very detailed Hogsmeade town with shops, restaurants, etc. We loved drinking Butterbeer!!

We started in Tokyo and my family surprised me with a couple different animal cafes. Our first one was a pig cafe, and I was completely in shock the whole time. There were a lot of pigs of different sizes that would pile up on people’s laps. I was a bit skeptical at first until a caretaker convinced me to try it with a sleepy red-haired pig. It was so cute and just wanted to fall asleep in my lap. We also went to a cat and capybara cafe. The cats were the fluffiest things in the world. There was about a dozen cats and a single capybara which just stood there and stared at the wall until we were feeding it leaves. When the cat food came out the cats would climb on top of you and on top of the cat trees.

These are just a couple of highlights of our amazing trip to Japan!

This is the first time I have watched the EuroCup and it has been very entertaining! I switched teams a lot because my team selections keep getting kicked out of the tournament. Portugal lost in penalty kicks last Friday.

I feel like the Netherlands has been putting in the work and trying to win the EuroCup. They also have really cool jerseys. My family and I watched the game last night and they won 2-1 against Turkey. Turkey has been a really good team throughout the EuroCup but they couldn’t beat the Netherlands. The next game on Wednesday is against England, which just beat out Switzerland in penalty kicks.

The games have been really exciting to watch but also stressful at times. I really hope France or the Netherlands wins the entire tournament.

Over Spring Break we traveled to Italy, San Marino, and Monaco. In Italy we went to many different cities such as Florence, Pisa, where we saw the famous leaning tower, Parma, Genoa, Bologna, and Cinque Terre.

We started off in Bologna which is famous for several tall leaning houses. The most famous Two Towers were closed so they can stabilize them but we went to the top of the second tallest one in the city. It was a hike! We climbed up 12 floors of wooden ladders to get to the top.

When we went to Parma, we spent a full day visiting many farms and taking cheese tours. We loved the end product and brought a bunch back to Portugal. My favorite cheese was Parmigiano-Reggiano 24 months old.

Later we went to Cinque Terre which is a bunch of little fishing villages on the coast with hilly mountains. That is one of the places where we saw the most tourists. Each town was really cute and small, and the views were amazing!

Next we went to Genoa which we thought was a small town without much to do, but it ended up being a pretty big city with lots of great food and things to do! In Genoa, we found short red cookies which were delicious.

In the middle of our trip to Italy we went to San Marino on the east side and Monaco on the west side. I thought that San Marino was a coastal city but it was actually a walled city at the top of a mountain. We climbed to the top of the old city towers for amazing views. In Monaco, it was very expensive and there were a lot of fancy cars driving around. We had milkshakes at the Steak N’ Shake there.

Just recently girls at my school created and signed a petition to create a girls’ soccer team, and it was the first team of its kind in the entire school. I have already been doing goal keeping after school but that’s associated to the Sporting FC. There are 8 girls on the new team. We collected votes for the petition back in November and the new team just kicked last week. I’m looking forward to the rest of these season until the end of the school year. They are already planning to continue it next year. I’m also continuing with my goal keeping lessons and will play with that team too.

We went to a Sporting FC game recently and they ended up winning 5-1! They are currently ranked first. It was our first game seeing them. The stadium was easy to get to and we got seated early. The stands were fairly empty at first, but then just as the game was starting, everyone rushed in to take their seats. It started off with a couple songs where people, including us, were holding up their Sporting scarves. We really enjoyed the Sporting game, and couldn’t help but compare it to the Benfica game we saw a couple months ago. Overall, we liked Sporting a little bit more due to the location, uniforms, and action, etc, but it was certainly a bit calmer than the Benfica game. Benfica fans are much louder and rowdier, which makes for a fun and exciting game.

I moved to Portugal last month with my family. I didn’t really want to. It’s been quite an adventure. We arrived to an empty apartment and had to buy everything here. I got to pick out everything for my room. My room is the only one with an attached bathroom, because it used to be a maids’ quarters. I got an awesome mushroom lamp that my dad keeps trying to steal for the living room!

I just finished two weeks at my new school. The lunches are much better here! There’s a library where you can rent books for 2 weeks. I have two after-school activities. Tennis is on Tuesdays and Thursdays and goal keeping is on Wednesdays. My left thigh is really sore from all the diving and twisting in goal keeping! I’ve met a few friends and they come from different countries around the world.

Yesterday, we went to a large flea market where I bought a crochet whale with four baby whales that fit inside its mouth. We were there several hours and everyone got a few trinkets. I also got a gummy bear necklace, a few lego characters, a coin purse, and a ring. We played at a nearby park for a little bit. When we were leaving there, I recognized the street as being close to an escape room place we went to in April. I got excited and asked my dad if were were doing there again. We nodded yes, and my sister and I ran up to the door. We did an Aladdin one this time! We got stuck on a couple early clues but picked it up near the end. We escaped in 62 minutes!

It was a 5 hour drive there and back to Sandusky, Ohio where we went to Cedar Point Amusement Park. We got there on Saturday night and stayed at Hotel Breakers which got us into the park an hour early. We went in on Sunday morning and tried to get into a new roller coaster called Wild Mouse, but it was already too busy. Throughout our whole time here, it kept breaking down. We did finally get to go on it Monday morning after yet another fix.

We started off by going to GateKeeper and that one was really fun. There was no one else in line so we got to stay on two times in a row! We actually did three rides before moving onto other ones. We walked around the entire park which is on an island and went on many rides. My favorite rides on Sunday were GateKeeper, Valravn, and Raptor. There were so many good ones it’s hard to narrow it down!

Monday morning we got in early again. We missed Millennium Force on Sunday because the lines were too long, so we went before it opened on Monday and there were no lines yet. We got to ride it back to back and it was my favorite ride of the whole trip! We also did a few repeats from Sunday and a few other new ones. We did MaxAir and Skyhawk both days.

Today I’m going to tell you 67 decimal places of Pi. I memorized these over three days at home. The 67 Pi numbers are 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078.

I was able to write all of these on the whiteboard in class and I won first place! One other person in class just wrote down “3.” and then sat down.

Would you like to learn more about Pi?

A couple months I read a book about Alcatraz, and I decided that I really wanted to go see it in person. I didn’t know if you could actually still visit it. I asked my parents and they said that you can! Little did I know that my parents immediately started looking for cheap airfare… About a month later, my parents found a good deal and we booked it over MLK weekend!

When we got to the pier to leave, it started raining. We almost bought some over-priced ponchos but decided against it. I generally don’t like boat rides, so I just read a book on the way. When we got close, there was a large sign that warned you not to try to free prisoners. When we arrived to shore, we listened to an introduction from the park ranger and then we were on our way.

We had to walk up a long, winding road to get to the top of the hill where the main prison was. Once you arrived, you received equipment for an audio tour. We learned a lot while walking through the building. I didn’t know it was a military prison before a prison for citizen criminals. When it was a military prison, there were different staircases, different bars on the cells, and all of the doors opened at once. It also held 600 people then, compared to 336 later. When it became a citizen prison, the doors were changed, they abandoned Cell Block A, which we got lucky to see because it was only open on Sundays.

I learned a lot on this trip, and I’m so happy we were able to go!

We had a Halloween party this year and it was full of decorations and candy. There were a lot of kids and our aunt Cici came! I traded Pokemon with my friend Leo, and I got a pumpkin Pikachu card which I didn’t even know existed. My mom and aunt Emmy built a candy graveyard out of brownies and frosting. We had gift boxes for all of the kids to take candy home too. Right before the party ended, I rode around the house on my hoverboard. Right before the party ended, I rode around the house on my hoverboard.

At first I was a little nervous, but when we got there I became a little less nervous. When we first got on the boat I thought it was going to sink, but it didn’t. After we took off I started to paddle and we started moving quickly. There were a couple hidden sandbars that we got stuck on but we kept on moving. In the middle of our trip to our camping spot, we stopped at a sandbar to have lunch. Then we took off and kept on rowing down the river to our camping spot. Once we got there, there was no one there so we had the whole place to ourselves. We pitched our tents and played some games with waterproof cards. Soon after that, we started making a pool with a shovel. We sat and rested in it. We started a campfire with wood as the sun started going down. After that, we had walking tacos for dinner with delicious turkey meat that we cooked over the fire. We also roasted marshmallows and made s’mores!

The next morning when we woke up, you could not see a thing! There was fog everywhere. We ate bagels for breakfast while the fog burned off and it turned into a bright sunny day. We packed up our campsite and continued our canoe trip down the river. Once we got to the end, we tried parking but there was a fast spot we had to curve around to get in. We bumped into someone else that was leaving the parking area. After we loaded up our car, we stopped for ice cream in town, and then drove home. The next day, we went back to our normal summer camp.