Festival is done, and the Weekend is here!

4/26/2013

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Last week, our orchestra participated in Festival, where you play for judges, and they rate you on how well you played. We played the following pieces: Arlington Sketches, Dragon Dances, and Westminster Prelude and Fugue. Those were really fun pieces, and I liked them a lot. They were lively, and fun to play. Overall, our orchestra got a rating of 'Excellent.' I think that we could have done better, but we were just nervous when we played. Afterwards, we heard the judges' audio commentary on a CD, and the comments were nice, and he pointed out that we needed to work more on our dynamics, which I agree on.
Festival was really fun to be a part of. Finally, after a tedious week of working, the weekend is finally here! I'm so excited for the weekend, because we finished The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, and I've started The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. So far, I really love that game, as much as I do as Twilight Princess. So far, I've found my loft wing, competed in a race, and Zelda's been captured by a black hole. I can't wait to play more. Even though I'm not that far, I still really love it. I've finished my homework as fast as I could, and now I don't have homework, so I'm really excited for playing on my Nintendo Wii. No doubt, I'm really excited for the weekend after this long and tedious school week of work and CST prep tests. I'm also learning songs from the game series, and I'm really excited to keep on learning and playing that over the weekend, too!
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After State! Next is Festival...

4/19/2013

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Well, our state competition for Science Olympiad finished, and our school placed 8th out of 23 schools. That's a huge improvement from last year, and one of the highest places in the state competition ever. We aren't going to nationals, but it was a great experience, and we know what we are going to do for next year, and we are really excited. Our school placed very well. My partner and I got a 2nd place in Helicopters, and two other members got a 1st in Rocks and Minerals, two other members got a 4th in Keep the Heat, and three other members got a 3rd in Mission Possible. That's extremely well, and I can't wait for next year.
After Science Olympiad, our orchestra had to go to festival, which is an opportunity to perform in front of judges, and receive an overall score about our orchestra program. Our orchestra played Dragon Dances, Westminster Prelude and Fugue, and Arlington Sketches. We sounded pretty nice, and we scored an overall of Excellent. I think that we could have done a little better, but it's pretty good. We had to repeat a verse in Arlington, where we sped up a lot, but it went well, because we all listened to each other, and played together. This was a nice opportunity for our orchestra, and I'm looking forward to next year.
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State!

4/12/2013

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I'm in a competition called Science Olympiad, and in that competition, teams from different schools prepare for the competition, and we all compete against each other. Regionals went really well for us, and we placed first in regionals, meaning Computech, us, get to go to the state competition. State is coming up pretty close, and we need to practice lots, to make sure we do our best! We have 23 events, and we have to study them, or build in them, depending on your event, and there are certain things you can and cannot do.
Say you had the event called Metric Mastery. First, let me tell you a little about that event. There will be different objects in competition, and you would have to guess how long it is, it's volume, density, mass, force, and how long it takes for something to do something by not even touching it. It's pretty hard, but to make it even harder, judges have put a time limit on it, making us do the task in 30 seconds. In this event, you can't bring anything, except for a non-programmable calculator. This seems like it is unnecessary, but it is. The event supervisors didn't want people to be cheating, which made everything unfair for anyone else. 
After that, there is an actual measuring part of it, where you get one minute to find out the task, and measure whatever it says to measure. This is pretty hard, but once again, there are the same regulations. These events are really fun, but hard, and I can't wait for the state competition!
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