Picture

here's that picture that katie can't post

God, it was so much fun to be in Michigan! i miss it a lot. katie's right, we all just went crazy and we girls ate baklava at night. it more like 11:00 'cause it was after we got back from the movie theater. after we were high on sugar is when we gave each other plant nick names (or in Galen's case, a food). anywho, it's definitely something worth repeating.

i'm so bad at this title thing

Hi..... me is bored. Therefore, me is going to tell you 10 of the funny/cool things that happened in Michigan

1. Check out these nicknames:
Hannah- Trumpet Vine
Juliana- Bamboo
Katie- Fern
Ellie- Wisteria
Galen- Wet Noodle
John- Dirt Clod
It's kind of a long story how that happened and I'm not even sure how it came about. Maybe someone else can tell you.

2. John was attacked by vicious, Razor-thirsty 5th graders from New Jersey. He's never been the same since.

3. Hannah met Mr. John Hannah, former president of MSU. Actually, his statue. I have a picture, but I can't post it cuz we're on dial-up (arg arg arg).

4. Somewhere on the trip they passed a Dairy Queen and Ellie was like "They have DQ's out of Texas?" LOL. Sorry Ellie but that was just so funny. For non-Texan reference, in Texas, DQ's are EVERYWHERE. It's like a law. To have a town, you need a bank, a post office, and a Dairy Queen.

5. Galen got kicked out of the dorms for hacking in on the wireless. just kidding, lol.

6. Julian stole one of our Ranatra Fusca medals and put a "I <3 Gdansk" bumper sticker on Ellie and Juliana's door.

7. We had an awesome lunch at this Greek pizza place it was SO GOOOOOD. Then we brought home baklava (which was also SO GOOOOOOD the others will say I'm addicted) which we didn't get around to eating until like 10:00 at night and we were so tired we were just giggling about everything. At least I was...

8. Dad, Hannah and I were waiting for everybody else to arrive and we were eating ice-cream in town and these guys were walking by with big snakes on their shoulders! It was so cool, they told us all about the snakes and the ones they have at home (they have like 8).

9. We actually tugged, heaved and pulled the boys into a group hug before performing. Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles. muahahaha

10. aahhh my mind is running slow I have nothing to say. uh.... WE MET TONS OF COOL KIDS, NAILED OUR PERFORMANCE AND HAD AN AWESOME TIME! yeeha!

scores

Hey, I just wanted to make a link to show how we did, so if you want to see our scores, just CLICK HERE

Honks

Well, technically we only got 19 before we got to worlds, and you are STILL getting honks cause the van is still painted up.

Crazy Austinites and Bored Truckdrivers

howdy!
Just wanted to add that we got more like 40-something "honk if you love hamsters" on our epic journey to Worlds. Most of the honks were from crazy Austinites and bored truckdrivers.

just sayin' hi...

Hey! Great pix guys! Wow, you must be pretty bored Galen, if you're posting about the cafeteria food. How can you even bear to think about it? I have some pictures that I'll post later, and I'll see if I can get that video of the Rube Goldberg machine on here. I know, dear readers, that that is what you want to see, right? Part of our solution? A product of our genius hometeached minds?

Nasty Food

yeah, the food at the cafeteria was awesful. after like the second day, i just ate cottage cheese and an iceburg lettuce salad (mmmm). that wasn't too great either. but we survived it and are still here and breathing. so at least we know that it wasn't poisoned nasty food.

Nasty food

This was the cafeteria where we ate.
They had really awful food, but they did have a soda dispenser, so it could have been worse.

Here is some nasty food.


Here is Ellie, Juliana, and Hannah eating nasty food.


And here is a crowd of people eating nasty food.

Awesome pics

nice job putting all those pics on our blog ellie. very impressive. especially the Odyssey of the Chip; loved that part.

Odyssey of the Chip!

The drive back was really boring. To fully illustrate the extent of my boredom, let me present the Odyssey of the Chip!

And yeah, that's basically what I did the whole way home - took pictures of myself and other people eating chips and granola bars. Sounds like fun, huh?

Worlds Pics

Behold the pictures! So this was the ride up to michigan - terribly exciting:

notice that Galen and I are in the exact same position:

Galen sleeping! haha.

Here we are crossing the mississippi river. And there we are in Indiana

We're in Michigan! At a rest stop!

We got to the campus at about 10pm, then we had to get our keys and find our dorms and everything. So yeah, here we are....waiting. In front of a very green wall.

Planned candid shots! Gotta love 'em. John was supposed to be kicking Galen out of the dorm they were sharing, but Galen flat out refused to participate, so here we have Hannah being kicked out.

Here we are.....SA Hero!

On our first day there we met this team from Japan so we traded some pins with them. It was really sweet, us all sitting under this big tree and trading together.

Here're all my beautiful pins

Opening Ceremonies:

This is our buddy team from Poland! Or most of them. The two girls on the team, Kasha and Amila aren't in this picture. from left: Maczek, Coach Dorota, Kuba, Woztek, Szymon, and Julian.

This is Kuba performing in their skit. He played a kitchen wench who got her dreams stolen from the Dream Hunter (played by Julian). So she had to go to the Realm of Dreams and get them back. or something like that.

Wow, one of their vehicles was amazing! It's the thing that kinda looks like a waterwheel in the middle of the pic. The vehicle had cd drives that slid in and out. And when one would slide back in, it would activate the next one, and on and on. So the cd drives would, one after another, launch out, catapulting the vehicle forward and making it roll. They won a Renatra Fusca for it at their Poland competition.

Szymon, Julian and Kuba!

Ok ok, i did get kinda obsessed with the whole pin-trading-thing. So here I am showing them all to Julian. I ended up giving him a bunch of Texas pins.

Haha, this was like just seconds after Julian knocked over my desk while skateboarding.

Caught in the act! We caught Julian sticking an "I Love Gdansk" sticker on Juliana's and my door. Gdansk is the city they're from.

This is when we took them to see Pirates of the Carribean

This was on the day we left. We were up all night the night before at that teen party, so we all look really tired. Galen and John look like they're still asleep. Our polish team won 1st place, world champions! So they were up all night, too. Singing their national anthem at the top of their lungs.

Creativity Festival-I met a dude from Canada and a girl from Hong Kong

This is Radik from Poland. He was really cool! And then I met this kid from Korea who could do a Rubik's Cube in like less than a minute!

And this is the kid from Hong Kong who loved my hat so much he traded me for it!

Here we are performing our skit:

A final farewell to our beloved Rube Goldberg machine


After we performed we threw all of our props in dumpsters!

Closing Ceremonies

Home Sweet Home

We're Home

hey all! we are all now in San Antonio and all in one piece. the drive back down wasn't so bad, but we did get on Ellie's nerves a bit. we had fun taking pics of people sleeping. it's also a bitter/sweet feeling for me now that O.M. is over. there will be nothing to do 'til it starts again. but i know that i had an awesome time and will definitely be doing it again. i loved our Polish team. they were so freakin' awesome. and everybody at worlds was really polite. so now we get to share pictures and watch the crazy stuff that we did on video. so 'til next year!

17th out of 45!

Hoorah hoorah we're home! It's a bittersweet feeling, Worlds was sooo awesome. Out of the 40 teams competing in our division, we came in 17th! And there were 5 international teams ahead of us, so I guess you could say we got 12th in the U.S.! We were only 5 points behind the 2nd place winner in our Long-Term, but we did really average in Spontaneous. But wow, 17th at Worlds is totally amazing! We're all really happy.

I learned a lot from Worlds. I used to think that the teens in Japan and Poland and other countries were so different from me, that just because they spoke a different language or were from another country, there was a huge gap between us all. But really, there's not. When I was talking to other 14, 16 year olds from other countries, I found that there's really no difference, we're all connected. They're into music, bands, movies just like we are. They're just like us.
I've got pics of Polish kids, Korean kids...oh my gosh, this one little boy from Hong Kong, he traded me a cool Chinese cartoon character key chain thing for my cowboy hat! i've got a picture of him, too.
Ok, well I'm about to like pass out I'm so freakin' tired, so i'll put a million pictures on tomorrow of all the friends I made. I had so much fun!

Stage

This is the stage we performed on