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Now that we only have a few more weeks left of school, I have begun to plan out my summer. After all, there are a lot of things one has to do in the three months of freedom they get once a year. Summer is the only time I have to really relax so I make sure every second counts.

Well… first of all, I will be swimming twice a day every week and I will be in swim meets every weekend. I swim until 9 in the morning and then I get back in the water at 3 and swim until 5. It is a lot of swimming but most of my friends are on the swim team so I get to see them every day which makes things better.

In between morning and afternoon practice, I will mostly be doing two things. The first is working with my horse and riding him, and the second will be working on my World Civ. class that I am taking over the summer. I’d much rather be riding my horse, but I have to finish my class too. Darn….

The Final thing that I know I will be doing over the Summer, Is going to camp for two weeks. It has always been one of the highlights of my summer and I am so excited to go again this year. It is an extreme sports camps, so of course for half of it I will be hiking/river rafting the Grand Canyon! I am ecstatic to see the grand canyon! when I get back form the Grand Canyon, at the actual camp, ( it is called Kivu) they  have the fastest zip line in Colorado, a lake the size of the Jordenel that you can go to, and an extreme party every other night! Last year they filled the gym with bubbles and neon paint up to your chest!!! Along with all of these cool things, camp is the  only time every year, that I get to see my two best friends. They both go to the camp and sense they live in different parts of the country we don’t see each other often.

I have been waiting for nine months for summer to come and now it is almost here! I hope you have a great of a summer as I will!

“Oh no, we definitely don’t have to pay!” my mother arguedas we walked away from our rented mini van that was now parked on the streets Curacao. She was so convinced that we hadn’t needed to pay to park on the street, but as we walked along we began to see more and more parking meters. I think after a few blocks we had realized that we might have had to pay but we were to lazy to walk back so we just left the car where it was. Ops…..

When we returned a few hours later there was a bright orange boot on our car. We were all in shock. This was definitely a first for all of us. We had no idea what to do! We didn’t have a phone and there was no one around who spoke English. My mom, my two brothers, and I were stuck. So…. in light of a better option, we sat down and started laughing. We looked like idiots, sitting on the side of a high way with a boot on our car and laughing. Crazy Tourists.

After a few minutes the police showed up and tried to tell us how to pay our fine so we can go. That’s when my older brother decided it would be cool if he got up and started taking pictures of the whole thing. Apparently police don’t like have pictures taken when they are working…..

So my mom is standing there trying to talk to the guy, while the guy is yelling at my brother in Dutch to stop taking pictures, while my brother isn’t understanding him and taking more pictures, while my other brother and I are just standing there trying to make sense out of the whole ordeal. It was weird…..

Finally, another man walked up and began to translate for the cop. He told us that if we wanted to get the boot off our car, we had to go down to the police station to pay a fee. Oh…. that is what the last ten minutes of dutch nonsense meant!!!! But of course there were not enough seats in the cops car to fit all of us…. only two could go.

So a minute later my ten year old brother and I found ourselves sitting on the side of a large road, alone, with no phone, food, and not even the keys to the car so we could sit inside. Cool mom, just leave your two youngest children alone in a foreign country. Its all good!

Well…. anyway, we had to sit there for about an hour. And when my mom and older brother came back they just simply got a wrench and unscrewed the boot form our car. NO biggy!

Now you may be thinking that having a pet shark would be one of the stupidest, most hazardous to your health, things to do, but at the Curacao Aquarium that is exactly what they have. Oh OK, so it is at an aquarium, not as big of a deal, but at this aquarium they let college students and seniors in high school handle, feed and perform shows with the sharks.

Yesterday I had the chance to go and see one of these shows. Of course in cCuracao the all speak Dutch so I had no idea what they were saying but it was cool to see the sharks swim around and eat up food that the 20 year old handler was giving them by hand. I was glad I was not having to be so close to the sharks. But then finally at the end of the show they asked a question and every one’s hands shot up in the air. Including my little brothers even though he had no idea what was going on. They picked on him,of course, and started to speak to him in dutch. He had no idea what was going on. Fortunately the man to our left spoke both dutch and English so he translated what they had been asking my little, 11 year old, brother to do.

They had been looking for volunteers to step into the tank, it was only around four feet deep, walk through the water (filled with around five sharks) and onto the platform where the handler stood. And finally get a chance to feed and pet the sharks with their hands. Crap………

Oh but it gets better……… Sense my brother was under 13 years old he needed some one to come with him….. and I just happened to be standing right next to him…….. Double Crap. So of course every one moves aside to let me and my very stupid little brother through to the side of the tank. This whole time my parents are whipping out their cameras so that they can take photos of the whole thing, not worrying about their kids that are about to be in a tank full of sharks….. cool mom. So they get the man that was beside us to translate what we need to do as we take off our shoes and climb the stairs up the the edge of the tank. He told us to walk quickly over to the platform with the handler who had walked over to the side of the tank.

Needless to say, we ran over and stood looking at all the sharks in the water around us. It was pretty cool. They had us bend down and pet the sharks (who are surprisingly smooth) and we even got to feed them!

We were up there for around five minutes and when we got down I was happy to have gone. I guess some foreign countries are a little bit more lax on the whole public safety prodical  thing.

Now that my family andI have been in Curacao for a few days we are starting to see what the island is really like. The island is pretty flat and is covered in short, dry shrubs and cactus’s. there is also an abundance of lizards. There are very few sandy beaches but that is OK sense most of our time is spent in the water. We have not explored the town yet and have stuck to our southern part of the island of the past few days. We are planing to explore more in the next few days.

Our house is amazing, with four bedrooms and a pool that hangs out over the ocean. The majority of the house is a large deck with the dining room and living room out side. the deck even includes four lounge chairs that I have spent the majority of my time at home on, soaking up as much sun as possible.

All of the cars are very small here. Our normal mini van cars look like monster trucks compared to the cars here in Curacao. For them, a mini cooper is a standard family sized car. It is pretty funny! People here also all drive like there is no tomorrow. they drive very fast and love to use their horns. It is insane how much they use them. If you go a mile under the speed limit you get honked at, and if you are a tourist you get honked at. You even get honked at when you are not even driving! You are walking on the side walk,BEEP. It is crazy! there is a constant beeping sound coming from the road as cars pass and beep at what there is to beep about. Oh look!!!! there is a cat! BEEP!

Being in a different country is very strange but is also very exciting at the same time.

Every year my family and I go on a vacation. Specifically some place warm. We go during spring break so we can get away from all the snow and hopefully by the time we get back most of it is gone. Well, anyway…..this year we decided to go to Curacao.

Now I know most of you are wondering, where in the heck is Curacao?!? Well, it is in the Netherlands Antilles. But now you are probably thinking it is in Europe right?!? Wrong. It is actually an island of the coast of Venezuela. In fact, there are three island all right off the coast that are called the “ABC islands”. A for Aruba B for Bonaire (we went there last year), and C for Curacao.

My family chose to go to Curacao obviously not for what was on the island, see picture to left, but for what is below it in the surrounding water. Every one in my family scuba dives. Not the dinky snorkeling stuff, but the 100ft under water seeing big sharks type of thing. It is way fun. Even my little brother, who just got his certification last year, likes to come with us on dives! Which is pretty amazing because he would rather sit and play his DS than ski on a great powder day or hang out at the beach! Diving is something that we all enjoy and can do together.

But of course that is not what I am doing right now. I am not even in Curacao yet! I am still sitting in the Miami Airport waiting for our flight to leave. It is roughly 8:00 am and I am exhausted from flying yesterday and spending the night here in Miami. but now I only have one more flight from here to tropical paradise! Yeah!!!!! Oh well, our plane is boarding now so I will blog later! See ya!!!!

Every family has it’s traditions. Some go to Idaho every summer to do what ever people in Idaho do and others all get together

every Christmas to have dinner. And then there is my family……..we ALL swim. Literally every one in my family has done a water sport at some point in their lives. It is all most ridiculous.

To start out, both my brother and I are on the swim team  and then all of my cousins are either on a swim team or at some point were on a swim team. Then there are my parents and their siblings, (Well… my mom dove but that still kinda counts as a water sport) but any way, my dad and all of my other Aunts and Uncles swam during either high school or college and most of them still swim now on the master teams in the various places they live. Lastly, my grandparents all all swam when they were young as well.

Yeah, that’s right, I come from a family of Fish! But it is not like we all tried to raise generation after generation of swimmers. In fact, when my parents got married they promised each other that their kids would never be swimmers. They didn’t want us to be swimming twice a day for the rest of our teen lives. But I guess it never worked, because by the time we were around two or three the only way my brothers and I would eat or stop crying was if we were in the bathtub or sink. My whole family just likes to be in the water! And guess what we do when we all get together!?! Instead of going out to dinner or watching the football game we all go swimming.

Of course now my parents totally support my swimming career, but swimming for us is a total family deal.

The ONE thing that swimmers hate more than a hard set or a crappy swim meet is…… not swimming. It drives the majority of us nuts. Our bodies literally go through withdrawals from being out of the water for long periods of time. I can personally tell you that is is one of the worst feelings in the world and makes your entire body feel bad.

The First day of not swimming may feel good, not having to stress over practice or how you need to do in the upcoming meet, but pretty soon the first symptoms of your deprived lack of chlorinated water start kick in. Every time you eat you feel grosser and grosser. Until you just don’t want to eat at all. It is like the freedom of being able to eat what ever you want and not worry about the calories or the fat is ripped right out from under you until your feel that ever time you look at food you are gaining weight.Now I am not saying at all swimmers are anorexic because we are most definitely not. We still eat the same amount of food when we are not swimming as when we are. We just get that weird feeling in our stomachs every time we eat.

The second thing that happens is that your skin starts to feel wet and sticky. Swimmers are used to having dryer skin due to the fact hat the water and chlorine remove most of the moisture from our bodies. The oil also adds to the feeling in your stomach when you eat because instead of you thinking of buttered bread as energy for your next race you, feel like it will make your stomach and skin feel so much worse. It is a very strange feeling to have oil back in your skin and it often bothers most swimmers for weeks after they stop swimming.

One of the other weirdest things about taking a break from swimming is that you constantly feel the need to shower or be in some body of water. It is like your body instinctively feels the need to be in the water for a certain portion of your day. I personally can go to a three hour practice and immediately go home and sit in the bath tub for another hour and a half. And, when I wasn’t swimming during the winter break I was taking three to four showers a day. I think for some of  us, or at least me, being in the water is a stress reliever. It is part of our daily routine and our routines are VERY hard to break.

The last bad thing about not swimming is that all of these symptoms seem to make swimmers very cranky. Going form feeling great to feeling like a yucky hunk of grossness in a matter of a few days would make any one upset. Swimmers are no exception. For this reason even our parents hate it when we are not swimming. It affects your entire life.

Personally, I am addicted to swimming. I swim every day and when I don’t I feel horrible and all of the other aspects of my life are affected. I haven’t gone more than 5 days without swimming this year and I never plan to throughout the rest of my high school career. I love to swim!

In my opinion, there is a fine line between the two types of sportsmanship. Good ……and Bad…. You can only fall on one side of the line. No one can be standing halfway in between or be undecided. EVERY ONE  is one or the other.

A good way to tell what side of the line a person falls on, is to see how often they change their attitude about a person depending on how the other individual performed in comparison to themselves. People with bad sportsmanship will go into a competition laughing and talking with the others, but will loose and come out not even bothering to say good job to their competitors. Sad isn’t it?!?

Well I know this is kind of a doom and gloom subject and you are probably thinking about what a bad person you are or some one you know is, but the other day I saw it happen. We were at the Senior State Championships and my two friends were just about to race. They were both joking and laughing with each other. You would have thought they were the best of friends if you saw them. But when the race was over and only one of them came out on top, the looser decided to turn all crabby. She didn’t even look or acknowledge the other racer’s presence as she cooled down, talked to her coach, and sat in a soppy mess over by herself. It was pitiful.

The next thing you know, the two are in another race together and….. who would have thought it!!….The girl who would not even look at her competitors won and was now running around the pool telling all her opponents how great she had done (including the girl she had shunned a few moments ago). Now, that right there, is the epitome of bad sportsmanship.

I just thought I would share that little story with you because even though we may only fall on one side of the sportsmanship line, I also think we have the ability to change which side we are on. If people try hard enough they can go from being like the girl above who could not even look at the girl who beat her, to a person who can say good job and like every one no matter how they do.

The high school season was great. Every one was friends, we could talk about anything and……..there were no little kids. but now that the season is over and it is time to go back to a twenty four seven life of obnoxious noises, crying, and screaming at the top of your lungs. Yeah!

So here I am, with a few tricks I have learned over the last four years of endless torture that can help with dealing with a group of 30-40 little kids.

First, the key to surviving the next five months with eight year old is to always think positive. For example……Only an hour left until I get to leave. Or …At least I don’t have to live with these people or spend me ENTIRE day with them. It helps to go into stressful situations with a positive attitude so that you have a few minutes of hope before you realize that they really are as bad as you remember them being.

The second thing to remember is to always pretend that you are listening. Little kids LOVE  to talk, so as long as you add in an occasional “um hum”, “Yeah”, or “I know” they never notice you stopped listening after they said, “guess what!?!” Sense there are a lot of girls on the team, most of what they tell you is a complaint or a sad, soppy story about how they lost their favorite sparkly pencil at school today, so it is also great to say, “oh!” or “you poor muffin!” occasionally.

The last thing to always remember is to never say anything you don’t want repeated. No matter how hard little children try, if you tell them a secret they will immediately turn around and tell it to the person next to them. Even If that means it is a person from another team, your Great Aunt, or (worst case scenario) your coach. Having learned form experience, it is always best to let the little kids do most of the talking and leave the over exaggerated stories about what you may have said for some one else.

I know some of these tips may seem heartless, but after 2-10 hours a day for four years with a bunch of little kids you, will be glad you know a few tricks to keep your sanity in check. You will stay happier and the little kids won’t get their heads ripped off or their mouths taped shut by you. EVERY ONE WINS!!!!! Yeah!!!

As the season comes to an end, there is one thing that makes all high school sport teams sad. The day when we have to say goodbye to the rest of our team.

At the beginning of the season I remember being so afraid of all the older kids on the team and always thinking that it would be better to stay out of their way. I don’t know why but all of the big seniors just scared me. But as the season went on, I soon found that my closest friends were the seniors on the team and that they were often the calmest andfunniest people to be around. They were always up of  anything and wanted to hang out all the time. Now that the season is over, the team will have to say goodbye to all of the our beloved seniors that made coming to practice so entertaining and helped the team get to where we were at state. I personally will have a very hard time seeing all of my friends leave to go to collage.

After the girls got 2nd at state and the boys got 3rd, the entire team became very close. Everyone was friends with everyone and we all hung out together. I made some great friends and came to know some people that I probably would not have hung out with otherwise. I will be sad for the team to leave and for every one to go their own ways. Many of us will not even get the chance to swim together until next year. 

 In the 2010-2011 season the only thing that is left is the awards ceremony, it will be the last time that the high school swim team of this year will ever be together. All of the Seniors will be going off to collage and the rest of the team will be playing other sports or hanging outwith friends that they don’t get a chance to hang out with during the high school season. I will be sad to say goodbye to all of my friends, but I am excited to see most of them come back next year for a great high school swim season.