Vacation!

Hello! So, this is the second day of our little vacation outing to Puerto Vallarta. Here is the order I will explain things: yesterday: why, haha, THE EVENT, the envelope; today; breakfast, teens, beach.

Why

     So, our friends (they will soon have a BABY! Well, not so soon, you wouldn't guess that she's pregnant) invited us to join them on their second honeymoon. (the first part was in Canada, the second part here) Our plan is to stay two nights, pick up some friends of ours who used to be missionaries, and come back.

Haha

     While we were driving (we were using the church's van because our Jeep is too small to carry our parents, Brother, and my little brother Kai, plus them and their son Jonathan) we got onto the conversation of the rearview mirror, which has a writing on it that has confused me since I first entered that van, which is "82,000 serive". I had previously conjectured that perhaps it was "survive" spelled wrong. (though I had forgotten that survive had a "u") It turned out that Dave, the husband in the family we were picking up, had written that to tell the church how many miles is should go before getting maintenance, or, as he meant to put it, service. We're gonna bug him about that.

THE EVENT

     So, as we were going, we gave Kai some yogurt drink with medicine mixed in because he always gets car sick. (Seems like we'd prepare better for this *shrugs*) Anyway, it turned out the medicine was all at the bottom, and the moment he got to it he started complaining that it tasted terrible. He was half spitting it out, half letting it fall onto his seat, and I could tell something was wrong. Suddenly he threw up, and not a little bit, gushing. Three or four times he threw up with it (I'm feeling sick right now, ugh) coming out like that, then it started calming down. At the first whiff I nearly joined him, but managed not to and we pulled over quickly enough to let him spit outside. Seriously, he didn't throw up a single time after that. Mom started cleaning up and brother helped her, me and dad were just trying not to breathe, and Kai was jabbering about how happy he was to go to a hotel. (How can you recover that fast? And why pick now of all times to decide you like sleeping somewhere other than home?) By some miracle mom thought to put some of the body wash she had brought on it. Oh, that may have saved us. Needless to say, those of us who could moved further back and we drove with the windows down.

The envelope

     So, the friends of ours gave me an envelope for the whole family (they gave it to me because we were in our hotel room, not our parent's, Brother was blowing up an inner tube, and Kai was not an option) and I decided to bring it along with us when we went to see the movie (just now occurred to me to amend the previous table of contents a second time, but I'll just tell you about it later) because I wanted us to open it on one of the inevitable times we would have to stop on the way. (Kai needed new shoes, he had taken them off in the car and subsequently filled them with throw-up.) I at some point handed them to my brother along with some napkins, he told me he put them in the funky tray thing they have to hold drinks and popcorn, and in short, we left it. While we were in mom and dad's hotel room I realized it. There was a general sense of, well, doom. We had no idea how to get it back. I suggested that the lady who took those tray things might have noticed that it was in there and would have taken it to lost and found, but there wasn't much response. We went to the hotel room, and, too be honest, I cried. I felt so terrible that I had lost it that I cried as I prayed to God to somehow bring it back. After a bit I decided to trust Him and be cheerful even if He didn't bring it back. At most thirty seconds later (seriously, I had just come out of the bathroom and gone into the room) when the phone rang. I knew that God had answered. (As for the phone, my brother did) He said that mom had asked that he come, and less than a half an hour later they came back with the envelope. Turns out it was in the garbage in the theater, but they got it out. Not a single time have I earnestly prayed to God has He not answered.

Breakfast

     To put things simply, it was awesome. Our friend were staying at a different hotel, but we got a day pass to be there (it's an all inclusive) and it was amazing. The breakfast buffet was amazing, I got tea, and Mexican hot chocolate, and crapes, and all kinds of stuff. And a bird stole a sugar packet, which Kai loved. What occurred to me that day was that I want to someday have a lot of money, so that I can pay for my friends to go to a place like that. Seriously, we have some friends who do stuff like that for us occasionally, and that's what I want to be able to do.

Teens

     Met some teenagers today. (I know not the most astounding thing to do, but the people I meet are all fairly similar, being Christians coming down to do children's ministry or build something.) There was this floating trampoline thing in the water at the beach and we all just sat there talking for a while. I learned some things, one of them being that some teens swear for no reason whatsoever, while others don't. Yeah, I should know this before now, but I rarely meet non-Christians.

Beach

     Well, between the sand and the terribly rough pools, it seems that some of my sunscreen was rubbed off, so I have burns in patches. The front of both my legs are awful. >.< I hate sunburns. However, we did have fun. We buried most of Kai, then most of me. Because I had my lefts crossed in the funky meditation pose I ended up looking like most of a corpse, according to our friend.


     So! The movie. We saw The Desolation of Smaug in 3D. To be honest, I thought it would be awful. I hadn't seen a single serious movie in 3D, so it didn't seem like a great idea. But it surprised me. When they weren't trying to make gimmicks out of it, (Seriously, Peter Jackson? Stooping as low as gimmicks? You are one of the two directors who's names I know and you stoop to gimmicks?) it was pretty good, particularly with Smaug! However, it was rather blurry.
     For my spoiler-free version, let me start by telling you I didn't like the first one. It included Radagast (who isn't even mentioned!) and makes him an idiot with poop on his face. (He is a wizard! He is respectable! He just finds animals to be preferable to the thinking races, which I am occasionally inclined to agree.) I could nitpick that movie to put CinemaSins to shame, but I'm not going to. I'll simply say that it was terrible as an adaptation of a book. However, throwing the book aside, it's a different story. With that perspective, I thought it was a nice movie. Not amazing or wonderful or incredible, but certainly nice.

     From here on out I will not refrain from spoilers, so beware! Still from the standard of no book, I liked that they didn't have the whole thing in English. There are parts in Black Speech and parts in the Elven of Murkwood, whatever that is called. They added a nice part with Fili or Kili (It's hard to tell what they're saying, and the subtitles were in Spanish, so I tried not to read them because that just confuses me) having a romance with an elf, which I liked. They also included Legolas (XD He's not so thin anymore!) and made a love triangle which has not played out yet.

     Okay, this is not a spoiler. SMAUG IS AWESOME! It was aweing how they did Smaug (they don't pronounce it as smog, though, but rather as smaoog), simply his size, and of course in a theater you have amazing surround sound! He strangely only has two legs and then uses his wings as front ones, which seemed a pointless deviation, but he was still cool.

True love and stuff

     Hello. Yeah, I know, I missed my deadline. I probably will consistently. For some reason my interest in this blog has plummeted. (I've got some hunches on why, I'll tell them later) I've got a lot of other things to do, too. I need to edit Violet's book, and a friend from the forum asked for me to edit his, and I'm doing one for my first fan, Kylen. Also, I'm starting a contest blog with another friend of mine from the forum named Catsi, (possibly why my interest has dropped) and I'm planning to start one for review sometime in the future. Other future plans include starting my next novel (after Christmas) and learning how to do copyediting. Or is it copywriting? Whatever. Anyway, that all means that I'm going to post less often. I'll still post, though.
     Oh, in terms of news, we announced to the church that we are leaving in April, so... Well, it went better than I thought it would. Mixed feelings of course, but now it's less of having a ton of conflicting emotions, more that emotions don't seem to want to come. My stomach kept hurting every time I thought my dad would say it though. The Christmas event my church does is coming up. I wonder what I'll do. As clarification, during this event each person is allowed to go up on the stage to sing a song, say a testimony, whatever. Last year I did a poem, (quite the experience, I'll relate it later) but I don't think I'll do that this time. But I do want to do something. Maybe with my brother. What can I do that isn't poetry? I write books of course, but I'm not good at writing in Spanish (not sure if poetry or prose is harder, haven't tried prose) so I don't think that'll work. Besides, I need very specific inspiration for short stories, otherwise they turn out terrible. I won't have a recorder by then, and certainly not time to practice. The musical kind, not the electronic. What other talents do I have? I've never sang other than in church and with my brother (we do Simon and Garfunkel pretty well, too) and me and him don't do it in Spanish. Heck, maybe I will do a poem.
     Okay, to the story I promised. Last year I decided I wanted to write a poem about Christmas, and I also decided that I needed to feel Christmas, and thus experience it, before writing it. We open presents in the morning, and the service is at eleven or ten (Mexicans celebrate Christmas Eve rather than Christmas, kind of like us doing Halloween rather than All Saint's Day, [Halloween comes from All Hallow's Eve, the old way of saying All Saint's Eve] so it isn't problematic for them) so that meant that I had to write it in the last minutes before we left. I wrote it on my computer and emailed it to myself to have on my Kindle, and did a few edits. Once it was my turn I got up (and discovered the meaning of stage fright) and began to recite. I consulted my Kindle because I hadn't had near enough time to memorize it, but halfway through it, my Kindle died. Managed to finish with only one mistake (I reverted to the original version, but it didn't mess up the rhyme) and got down. I felt terrible. My head was all cold and my vision was funny like sometimes when I get up too fast. (You people with low blood pressure know what I mean, your vision kind of clouds over and your head feels funny) It took a lot of time to go away. I'm so glad Henia came up and told me it was great. (She's the wife of one of the other missionaries, but she's from Cofradia) That was wonderful, and I was worried that it had been awful. (A note here, poetry is different than other writing types in that knowledge of the language is not enough. I've lived in Mexico nearly my whole life and am fluent, but I can't understand Mexican poetry. I get the words, but I can tell I'm missing something, and I don't get the feeling I do when I read poetry in English)
     Wow, that was long. Anyway, as I wrote this (about when I started explaining our church's Christmas event) I found that I liked this. So apparently I won't be dropping off. I won't stick to a schedule (Heck, I might post more) but I'll still post a good bit.


     Oh, and if any of you were interested in the contest blog (I'm not certain how many readers I have, the only one I know is Josie, and I know that you know about the blog already) here's the link: http://windowtothesoulcontests.blogspot.com/
     We're still setting up, (if you hurry and check out the "About Us" page you can see what I put for filler) but Catsi'll be running a little start-up contest from my friend Josie's prompts. Our first full contest will be to make our top illustration which is currently an image Kylen sent me to show me a color. Yes, Josie, we want you to participate. :)


So, as for the "true love" thing, it was something I realized when reading a poem. There isn't any such thing as the true love that Disney made up, but there is true love as in love that is true, and that is love that is unconditional, and applies to children and siblings way more often than romantic partners.

Done!

     I have finished my first ever first draft! It totals at 8 chapters, 68 pages, and 23,611 words. I have once again fallen in love with the story and will begin editing it later and will eventually publish it. So excited!!!

   So, as I am done with that one (for now) I will begin a new novel. Well, two actually. One is a true novel which shall be my focus. It is currently named The Milk-fed Dragon, and it is about a little dragon named Kahia who is adopted by humans. In this world dragons are fed fire by their mothers so that they can breathe it later in life, but milk puts their fire out. Not knowing this, her adoptive parents feed her milk from their cow. She lived a very happy, fireless life until one day she comes home to find her family gone. Her search for them also brings her to know her aunt and cousin, who have watched her at a distance for years.
     The other one is a children's story. My little brother Kai is six, and I've been trying to convince him to let me teach him to read. (An activity complicated by the fact that he's learning two languages and is supposed to learn Spanish first) He asked me if reading "takes you on an adventure". I told him yes, but that he would have to wait until he was older to read those books. So I've decided that I want to change that by writing novels of a low reading level that have good plot. It's going to be a four book series, each increasing in reading level and complexity.

The Lesser Kindred- Book Review

     I suppose I've given you guys enough time to read Song in the Silence, so here's the review for the second one.

 

 

     This book is a wonderful continuation; is completes what is expected, brings in new plot pieces, and leaves enough for a third book. A new subplot is brought in that revolves around several very enjoyable new characters.

     While the second in a series is often the most boring if not well done, The Lesser Kindred doesn’t lose any of the urgency or interest; the latter actually increases. In this book the light of villainy moves to Berys, and we find his plans getting more frightening and far-reaching than before.

     Once again, this book is for dragon lovers and those who like female protagonists, and particularly if you are female yourself, though not exclusively. This book is for those who are over thirteen at least, as it contains a little language and mature subjects, so consult your parents if you are a minor.

Never mind

Never mind the last post. :P Yeah, I should be consistent, but I decided that I like my blog the way it is, and I'm not ready for what I was thinking anyway. Seriously, I don't even like the book I'm writing, and have no intention of publishing it. Besides, from what I heard it's best to release a book every six to nine months (I'm self publishing, by the way) and I can't write and edit that quickly, so when I've got a couple of books ready I'll just make a website and have the "attention grabbing" stuff there.

Huh, that's rather short, I suppose I should write some more. Well, I'm hoping to finish my book by December, and then I'll be starting on a dystopian book. I'm also thinking of starting a blog where I'd host writing competitions after we move up to the United States, which should be in April.