It’s sure been a while since I’ve updated.  In typical Nueva fashion, last week we took what is usually a one day holiday and made it a whole week of no school.  That whole week I worked practically nonstop on making my one-man movie for my recital project.  On Saturday and Sunday I got all my costumes, makeup, and wigs.  On Monday I tried the makeup and costuming for the two characters that need the most makeup.  On Tuesday I met with my mentor.  On Wednesday I shot my first character, the young, orphaned homeless guy that wants to be an actor.  On Thursday I shot my second character, the old typical homeless guy, and watched Survivor .  On Friday I finally got a break and slept in.  Saturday I shot my toughest character, a 16-year-old Goth girl.  I’m so tempted to put up pictures of me as a homeless man and a Goth girl, but I’m trying to control myself until recital project night.  It’s going pretty well though, and for once I’ve managed my time wisely.

Alright, it’s time for a reality show update.  Survivor has been going for 3 weeks and is down to 15 people, Apprentice is still going on, and Amazing Race just premiered last Tuesday.  For the next season of AR they want families of four!  I would apply, but my brother wouldn’t want to and we would be eliminated first for sure.  We can’t even get to school on time let alone across the world.  My mom would stop for her coffee and my dad wouldn’t even hustle because he thinks everyone catches up to each other anyway at the airports and such.  From before the first episode of Survivor, I predicted Gregg would win, and I still stick by that even though he hasn’t had much airtime.  His tribe, the ‘older’ tribe, hasn’t gone to tribal council at all yet.  It was painfully obvious in the previews last week that Ulong was going to lose and Jeff or Kim was going home.  On Apprentice, I’m in the Yahoo fantasy game for that, and I’m in 281st place, which isn’t too bad at all.  I wrote this at a forum about American Idol, thought I’d post it here:

I’ve got a lot of solid feelings about AI. First of all, the wed. show is a waste of millions of people’s times, especially when it is an hour long. It really pisses me off, “You’re safe… actually you’re not, you’re going home! HAHA! Now let’s go to the judges to rub it in how terrible you were so we get you to cry on camera.” And then stupid Randy says the same thing to every single person, another waste of time. “Dawg, that was just ‘aight for me. At this stage of the competition people are looking for a star, you really gotta show what you got and pull it all out or you’ll be going home. Ya gotta remember this is a competition. Right dawg pound? ‘Hoo hoo hoo.’” Yeah, because they forget that it is a competition Randy. It’s like saying to a basketball team, “You guys gotta remember that you are playing another team. If you score more points you should be able to win. If you don’t score enough points, I think there’s a good chance that you will lose the game. And then there’s Ryan Seacrest… GO HOME! I don’t think he’s ever created a line of what he says, he just reads off the silly projector. Except for maybe “Seacrest, OUT!” because that sounds just obnoxious enough to have come from him. For some reason I still watch it though… I guess it’s my guilty pleasure.

Now the contestants… I missed the first guy performance night, but I really wish I got to see Bo and Constantine perform, because I really like the songs they chose to sing, especially Constantine. Kiss From a Rose by Seal. I don’t really have a distinct favorite there yet, but I do like those two guys. In the girls, I like Nadia and Vonzell. They’re performances are the most captivating. I don’t get the hype over Carrie; I don’t think she’s that good. And Janay… GO HOME JANAY! How is she still in there? She is obviously extremely uncomfortable on stage, her voice is wobbly, she can’t hit a note, and she’s a terrible performer. What is there to like; that she’s the underdog? She better go home next week, or I will raise the bar on American idiocy.

Now a Student Council update!  We are planning a dance for April 1st, the Friday the exchange students will be here, and we are planning a Spirit Week most likely for April 4th to the 8th.  Next week (probably Monday) we’ll talk about what we want each day, since only like 3 other people were able to show up to our academy meeting, for various reasons.  We’re going to be planting bulbs () as an item for the auction, and this weekend I’m writing up a proposal to get new microwaves for the MS kitchen.  I’ve already sent out the first draft and one revised copy to the other SC members, so we’ll discuss that next week also, and probably submit it.  I was thinking about it and I think the student council should get at least a picture in the yearbook.  Every school I’ve ever been to has had its SC in the yearbook.  I talked to Mai about it and she said she would try but she’s not promising anything.  It’ll be silly if I’m in the yearbook for Mathcounts and not student council.  I’ve got a picture in mind; the one of all of us on Movie night (scroll down or go to the next page to see it).

Here is a tip for any of you readers in 6th or 7th grade at Nueva.  If you want to run for president, you better really want to be president.  I love it and I’m having a ball, but it’s definitely work, it’s not any regular student council where you run for the popularity and then you sit around and meet about once every 2 months.  If I visit next year, I want to see people actually meeting and getting things done.  Being president kinda feels like being the constant project manager on The Apprentice.   One screw up and “You’re fired!”

Next week we have the 8th grade retreat from Wednesday to Friday… another three days of school off.  It will be fun to think of the poor kids in school while I’m relaxing with my friends watching movies and playing games.  We’re going to some Zen center somewhere… I’m not sure.  I hope they don’t wake me up early to meditate; if they do, heads will roll.  Literally.  Especially if they get too close, because I’ll kick.

But for now… I have to do that stupid critical analysis paper for science on this anthropology article this guy wrote.  I don’t even know what I’m saying… hopefully I’ll get lucky and it will make sense.  Highly doubtful.  Then we have to study for another crazy hard science test… great.  We took a test on some short reading thing in Humanities Friday, but I think that was just meant as a morale booster, since it was so easy.  Anyway, I really need to go to bed so I won’t wake up past 3 in the afternoon.  If it’s not a very nice day outside I’m going to have to film my last character (an overly happy mid 30′s guy that is so positive it gets on people’s nerves), but if it is nice, I can’t film, because it won’t match the day I have to edit it with for the character he talks to (Joy, the Goth girl).  Then I have to write most of my critical analysis paper.  Fun stuff.  Peace,

~Adam

PS.  I am god.  Leave me comments.  BOW TO YOUR SENSEI!

Happy Valentines Day!  For all you fellow Nuevans like me without a valentine, don’t worry, there will be a lot more people in high school than the 33 we have in our grade, and much more of an opportunity to have a boyfriend/girlfriend.  Hopefully we can all enjoy the last few months we all have together, because I know I will miss each and every one of you when I go off to BHS, and I mean that.  I enjoy your company, and I love how bullying isn’t much of an issue here, so I can feel like I am able to be myself without *too much* pressure to be otherwise.  I could write a paragraph of positives for all 32 people in our grade, easily.  So thank you all for being great.  (The 6th and 7th graders rock too .)

So away from the mushy crap (it’s Valentines Day I had to do it), last Friday was the dance.  I had a ton of fun, and I thought the DJ was probably the best we’ve had.  I really let loose and was able to enjoy myself, and even though some people were having some problems, it was overall a good dance.  Hopefully the student council will put on another dance, we’re gonna work for that.  Speaking of student council we met with the Hot Lunch commitee today, and hopefully we’ll be able to work something out to improve the system for the future.  We talked about what we have, gave some feedback, and started brainstorming some new ideas, like having a buffet style hot lunch for the middle schoolers.  Right now we are getting all this food through this one vendor who distrubutes everything, so they have to pay him labor costs, and that’s why the prices are so high.  I would just as soon get rid of that middleman step, and see what we can negotiate with each individual retailer, like Jamba Juice, Round Table, and World Wraps.  I think they would possibly work a deal with us to deliver, but it doesn’t seem like that’s even an option.  The impression I got was that the only reason they chose this vendor was because he had the lowest price.  My guess is that he has the lowest price, because he also has the lowest quality and the lowest quantity, so he still might be making more of a profit than some of the other vendors.  They said this guy is open to change thoughand he wants it to be better, so at least we might have something to work with there.  But really, Burger King served at school?  What was he thinking?  He was originally supposed to make the burgers himself, but someone complained about the smell so he just started getting it from Burger King.  So obviously, we’re working on it, and although it’s not likely many changes will be implemented this year, I hope we can figure out a better system for next year.

Our community service day was fun.  We went back to the same park as last time and got rid of some more ‘invasive species’.  Then we took a hike around the park, and then we went bowling!  The same day was Trevor’s birthday too.  Here are some pictures:

Saturday was Trevor, Riley, Kathryn, and Brian’s joint birthday party, and that was fun.  We went swimming, and then I got to show off my mad Poker King skills later in the night .

Music rocks my socks, just so you know.

~Adam

Can you imagine?  Me, spelling bee finalist and on the Mathcounts team… at Nueva at that.  I’m such a nerd.  This was a while ago, but somehow I came in 3rd place in the spelling bee, losing on the word “cunctation.”  I still don’t know what that means…  Then later that week, they decided to give the Mathcounts test in math class as a requirement instead of during lunch as an option this year.  Astonishingly I got in the top 8 in the school, so I got on the Mathcounts team.   It’s still funny to think about.  I was the only person on the team that didn’t go to the practices before, so I pretty much knew nothing about it.  I was excited to go to my first nerd convention though .  The competition was last Saturday, and of course Nueva did really well.  The team part of the team (Terry, Alex E, Christian, and David Ko) did really well, and came in 2nd place, so they are going to state!  Ashu also did really well, he came in 6th place as an individual (Christian came in 8th and David Ko came in 4th, but they are going as the team), so he is going to state too as part of the all star team.  I did better than I expected, and got 28th place out of 129 kids total.  Then there was the countdown round, which is like a gameshow type thing where there are 11 people per round, and you have to buzz in to answer the question, and if you get it right you move on.  It’s just for kicks (and trophies…), but it’s pretty fun to cheer for your team when they are up there.  I couldn’t beleive it, I actually got to the 2nd round!  I got this question the fastest: Using the numbers 4, 5, and 6, what is the lowest possible number you can get using the formula a(b-c).  The answer was -10, 5(4-6).  Christian did really well in that, and got to the final 4.  So for anyone considering Mathcounts, if you want to see some fememullets, Mathcounts is the place to be.  Those kids are pretty hip.

David, Terry, Christian, Alex (the team)

Ashu, Duncan, Cassandra (the individuals, plus me)

Later that night I had my rockin partay Kleinster style.  It really was Kleinster style, it was three weeks after my birthday, and everyone came late .  After everyone get settled, ate, and the especially fashionably late people arrived (about 40 minutes later, no less), we went on a scavenger hunt around Burlingame Avenue.  I had put some teams together, and I got a lot of really cool ideas from Rush (SEL teacher).  Some of the stuff was like getting a picture with a policeman and the starbucks manager, finding something you need emotionally, and something you need academically for HS, get a picture of your team in a brand new car, find a photo of Donald Trump, get a job application from blockbuster, have someone on your team try on a shirt at a maternity store, and create a pyramid with your bodies being just a number of them.  Afterwards everyone came back and we just hung out for a few hours at my house.  Almost the whole 8th grade was there, but we missed the few that couldn’t come.  I know I for one had a great time, thanks for being good and not using my garage this time.   Here are some pictures from Saturday night:

Almost done… stick in there.

Whew… that was more than I anticipated.  Poor dial up people…   I’m sorry for that, I really am.

Anyway, tomorrow we have another day of school where we don’t really have school.  That’s a big thing I’m going to miss about Nueva.  In HS I’ll actually have to have school EVERY day! THE HORROR!   At Nueva we barely have school, and then when we do, we still don’t, if you get that.  After we go to that park again, we’re going to go bowling .  I bet most people can’t say they get to go bowling during school, huh?  Didn’t think so.

Gotta go, tonight was the 2-hour finale of Amazing Race 4 (thank god for TiVo)!  Time to watch… even if it 10:30 .  And get ready… 9 days until the premiere of Survivor 10: Palau!  This time there are 20 castaways, and as I predicted correctly, they are going to start as one tribe.  It really will change the game, because alliances will be less useful, and I think it should make it more like season 1, with everyone voting whoever they want.  Thursday February 17th, 8 PM.  Be there.

Peace,

~Adam

You guys know I never post these things, but I couldn’t pass this one up.

DUDE!  Nueva kicked ass at the bowling tounament today.  My team of 4, me, John, Trevor, and Ann got a combined score of 580 in the first game.  John got 177, I got 166, Ann got 128 and Trevor got 109.  I got a Turkey (3 strikes in a row) .  It was such a rush of excitement, there was a strike like every other ball.  We had a cheering section too, Kelly, Claire, Charlotte, Arielle, and Shana all came to watch.  2nd game we got 521, I got 135, Trevor got 130, John got 129, and Ann got 127.  None of the other teams even came close .  Our other Nueva team did really well too.  It had Grant, Alex D, Riley, and Stevie.  I’m sure they got second place.  Riley was rocking it in the 2nd game, he got a 155.  Nueva is officially the king of bowling… Ooooooohhhh yeah we’re so cool .

Today was an awesome day.  I only had two classes, PE and Music Electives (World Music), and then we went and saw an original play at University High School which was pretty cool and very artsy.  I got the last few members of the bowling team together once we got back to school, and then we went.  After that I came home and cousin and uncle (Dani and Tommy) got in (they are visiting colleges up here this weekend), and we all went to my birthday dinner at Benihanas.  A little late I know, but I’m going to have my birthday party even later.  I’m pretty sure I’m going to have the whole grade over at my house a week from Saturday (Feb. 5th… only 21 days after my real birthday ), pretty much just to hang out and I may split people into teams and play some games or do a scavenger hunt on B-Game Ave. or something.  I still need to make the invitations, so we’ll see.

My cousin did really well on her Bat Mitzvah, and the party afterwards was really fun.  I danced pretty much the whole time, and according to my relatives I’m a “dancing machine.”  One of the hired dancer people even said that I was “like, the greatest dancer,” and who said white guys can’t groove?  You all probably know how red my face gets when I play sports really hard or whatever, like in PE when we do strenth conditioning or whatever, but you should have seen my after I danced. Jesus Christ lmao, I was beet red.  I have a picture when I was like that, but you don’t get to see it, unless I really like you, which I don’t.  So go away biatch.  Joking…  You know I love you…

I’m going to miss Nueva…

~Adam

PS.  It’s 11:11, now I’ve made two wishes today, one on the belly of the little mini Buddha at Benihanas, and one now, so it better come true!

Movie Night was a HUGE success!  It went great!  All of us SC members dressed up in our cute movie outfits, with a red bow tie and all, looking simply marvelous as usual.  We rented a popcorn machine and made movie theater like popcorn all throughout the night.  We raised more money many than any of us thought we would, and 20% of whatever profit we made is going to the Tsunami Relief fund.  A lot of people showed up and we were selling concessions constantly and consistently.  I think we worked really well together and pulled off something pretty cool for it being our first event.  A big thank you to everyone who showed up, and a “Woot woot!” to my fellow SC members for pulling it off.  Here are a few pictures from the night, and the rest are at: http://photobucket.com/albums/v355/nuevacouncil/Movie%20Night/.

David & Allegra, 7th, Grant, Trevor, and me, 8th, Neal & Adam, 6th.  Job well done guys (and gal ).

Later this morning (since it is already morning…), I’m going to the LA area for my cousin Kendyl’s Bat Mitzvah.  Should be fun, see you all Monday!

~Adam

PS.  An apology for my last post: You couldn’t find me at school the next day, because I was home sick again Thursday .  So sorry.

PSS.  A note about the currently watching:  I just had to show Plan 9 From Outer Space, possibly the worst horror movie ever made (in the 50′s), before we started the first movie and during the intermission.

I’m 14 now!  I spent the last 5 or so days (from Friday night to Tuesday night) at John’s house.  My parents went to go look at colleges with my brother over my birthday weekend, but it was ok since this was the only time they could go.  On Friday, my parents left in the morning, and at school we have a Student Council academy.  I put Trevor to work on the phone calling people to see what we could get on pizza and a popcorn machine for Movie Night.  We got a pretty good deal for pizza, and we found out a few different options for a popcorn machine.  After school I went home with Trevor, and we went to this place where a lot of the February birthdays are planning on having a joint party.  The place was pretty cool, so that party should be really fun.  Then we went back to Trevor’s house, hung out for a while, then headed off to B-Game Ave for dinner before the All City dance.  The dance was fun, and after it I got a ride from Arielle back to John’s house. 

The next day (Saturday) was my birthday, and I got about 7 cards throughout the day from my parents.  I bet you guys don’t get seven birthday cards in one day from your parents .  John was being in an “anti-social” mood, so we just went bowling, he didn’t want a ton of people there.  John’s parents were really nice (Scott is so damn funny), and they let me choose what I wanted for dinner, and dessert.  After dinner, John blindfolded me, threw me in the car, and took me to a surprise party!  It was so cool, and that’s why he had been in an “anti-social” mood the whole day, he didn’t want me to throw a party lol.  We went bowling AGAIN (way to throw me off John lol), then he blindfolded me again, and when they took it off I was in a boat in the Foster City Lagoon.  Way cool.  Then we went and watched Blazing Saddles (GREAT movie, it never gets old).  Thanks to you guys who put that together, it was awesome!

Sunday we hung out with Arielle and her friend Kate during the day, pretty much just walking around John’s neighborhood.  We didn’t really do much, but it was still so much fun, just hanging out.  Then at night we went back to Arielle’s house, Trevor and Mai also came over, and we just hung out, listened to music, and watched parts of the Golden Globes.  Robin Williams got the lifetime achievement award, and we got to see Cody (you Ninja Poet you ), which was really cool.  On Tuesday I said congratulations to Robin, which was pretty surreal and cool since I had just seen him on TV.

Monday me, John, Arielle, and Kate went to Burlingame Avenue for breakfast/lunch, and after we ate the girls wanted to go in “Bebe.”  I couldn’t believe that I was actually going in there, but I reluctantly did, shielding my face and not believing I was actually in there.  The girls each tried on a dress, and what do you know, I turn around and see Yukiko (Japanese teacher and Mai’s mom), standing right there.  Wow, talk about a nightmare lol.  I don’t usually get embarrassed, but comon, I was in Bebe for christ sake .  Anyway, then we went back to John’s house and didn’t do much the rest of the day.

Then I had school yesterday, and today I’ve been home sick.  I felt like I was starting to get sick Monday, and it’s just gotten worse.  I felt like I needed to go today, because of the SC meeting, and we need to figure out what we want to buy and how much of it for the movie night (which is this Friday btw, find me tomorrow to buy tickets in advance; we are showing The Truman Show and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off; tickets are $5 in advance, $6 at the door).  I was too sick though, so I just called Trevor and told him to go on with the meeting and call me after school to let me know what went on.  Hopefully it went well, and I’m sure it did.  Speaking of student council, you should all check out the Nueva Student Council that I made about a month ago.  It’s a place where the SC can discuss, students can see what the SC is up to, and you can chat with other students.  If you like it, go ahead and register, so you can join in the conversations when you want.  Let me know if you need any help with it.  Here is the link: http://nuevacouncil.proboards43.com/.  Check it out.

Well, I should go now, it took a while to type all this and I’m not feeling too good, so I should probably go rest.  Sorry for the length of this one, if you read it all you get a cookie .  Now go comment and wish me a happy 14 you punks!

2005!!! Happy New Years everybody, let’s make it a good one.  I spent New Years in Lake Tahoe with my grandparents on my dad’s side, my aunt and uncle, and some of my cousins.  I decided I’m going to start putting some pictures in my xanga again.  Start sighing, this will make my entries even longer (and you were thinking that wasn’t possible… HA!).

Of course we had to play poker New Year’s Eve!

HAPPY NEW YEARS!

Here’s to a hopeful New Year…

Now going back in time to Christmas.  I got an iPod Photo, which is pretty awesome, and guess what?  I took pictures.  I feel really bad for anyone who has dialup right now trying to view this page.

While we were up there, there was a huge blizzard, the roads were icey and dangerous everywhere, none of the gas stations had any gas, and there were accidents everywhere.  We were snowed in and ended up coming back Tuesday, the day school started, so I had to miss a day of school.  I missed the showing of the movie we made in Jazz/Rock Band class, which was extremely disapointing, I wanted to see it being shown.  Oh well, I’ll try to get a copy of it.  I came back today and we had our first student council meeting, which actually went really well.  We are meeting again tommorrow, and we’ve got some good plans.  Then tonight, once again, I went to the Nueva open house to be on the student panel (I think I’ve only not been on one, ever).  That was fun, exciting, and thought provoking as usual.

My recital project is coming along pretty good.  I have most of my script, except I just have an outline for the begining, and I haven’t written the end yet.  It’s long though, I have pages and pages of lines.  I’m going to meet with my mentor Mike again tommorrow.

Peace and have a great year everyone.

~Adam

I’M PRESIDENT!!!   I’m extremely excited.  Me, Trevor, and Grant all won representative; you guys were great competition, it’ll be fun working with you next semester.  When she called me last night, I was breathing so heavy, I couldn’t beleive it.  We agreed not to talk about who won until today, otherwise I would have posted last night.  I think most of my votes came from the 7th grade, the 6th grade girls, and a number of the 8th grade girls.  Here was the presidential speech I made; if you heard it, just skip over it.

First of all I just want to thank the 8^th grade for giving me this opportunity to be on the student council and run for president, and for all of you for sitting and listening to all three of us bore you for a few minutes during your lunch time.

There are a number of specific qualities a president must have.  A president needs to have vision.  Ever since summer, I have pictured in my mind how a student council might work, and when I came back to school, I did my all to implement a plan.  If I had come into this saying I wanted a student council, but not having an idea of how it might run, then we wouldn’t have had a good basis to start on.  If elected, I will bring rough plans for people’s ideas into every meeting, so we have somewhere to start.  If no one starts us off with a plan, we could discuss and argue about how we wanted to pull something off for meeting after meeting and not get anywhere.  I know how we may be able to fix and plan some things, and I think realistically.

A president needs to have will, drive, and determination.  No matter what people are saying about how hard something will be to do, or thinking that no one will like an idea, you have to keep at it.  If I had listened to the people who told me that the student council would never happen, that there wasn’t enough student interest, or that we shouldn’t try to get one running this year, because it’s not going to happen, then we wouldn’t be where we are now.  I could have just as easily forgotten about it, but I felt that it was possible, and it was something that could be really good for Nueva, so I kept at it, and now we have our student council elected, and they are all ready to get going.  If I had given up on this at the very beginning stages, no one would have been there to pick it up again.  I have the will and determination to do just about anything.  If someone set me a task, and I was motivated to do it, I would work nonstop on it until I came up with something good.

A president needs to have faith.  Faith in ideas that may not sound good at the time, but faith that with work, they can be improved.  You can’t disregard an idea before you give it a shot.  Someone that shoots down ideas right away without hearing the person out or giving it a second thought shouldn’t be president.  I don’t judge people’s ideas by the people suggesting them.  I look at each idea as a plan, rather then looking at the person.  I will listen to every idea with equal interest, I will let people explain their thoughts, and then see what we can work out to make it work.

A president needs to have charisma.  When the student council comes up with a plan for something, there will need to be someone to present the idea to a group of teachers or parents, and I can be convincing with that.  I feel completely comfortable talking to adults, so I think that would give the council’s plans a better chance of being approved.  I would be willing to put time and effort into presentations, and if we needed someone to lead an event or dress in a chicken suit, I would be the one to do that.

Lastly, a president needs to be able to listen and understand, but also lead.  Listening is very important.  You can’t just do what you want, and forget what everyone else thinks.  However, I wouldn’t spend hours having discussions that lead to arguments that get us nowhere.  That’s where leadership comes in.  You have to know when to stop the discussion, and actually work on compromising to form a plan.  After leading the meetings before the elections, I now know how to facilitate compromises, and I realize that once people have made all their points and start repeating the same ones in other words, it’s time to bring the discussion to a close or an argument will start.  I will do all that I can to be unbiased in suggesting compromises, and just doing everything I can to make the representatives and the student body agree.

I am excited about what the student council will be able to cover next semester, with setting up the council for future years, fixing problems people have with some stuff at school like hot lunch, raising money for the student council, and then using that money to plan fun events for the middle school that we have never done here at Nueva before.  This first year of the student council is very important to do right, and I just want you to trust in me to finish what we started together.  I know how to make things work, and I think that the future of the student council might rest a lot on who will lead the council through this whole process.  I believe that I am that person, and I hope you do too.

Well, I got through last week… barely.  I stayed after school Tuesday and Wednesday for 2 1/2 hours so I could finish my PowerPoint presentation.  I haven’t even presented that yet, I’ll probably be like the last to go.  It was fun though, on Tuesday Cecile and Shana was there, and we had a chance to talk, and on Wednesday Andreanna and Marlowe were studying for the science retest, so that was cool.  Thursday was the science retest.  I got a 56 instead of a 36 this time, but still not nearly good enough.  That night we had the bazaar for our humanities culmination.  It was cool, but it dragged on a little.  You don’t need 2 1/2 hours to have that.  Now this week we have a ton of self evaluations (Nueva’s alternative to grades, we write about ourselves and then the teachers write about us), and I still need to give my oral presentation.

Friday night was awesome!  Trevor, John, Char, Brian, Chris, Chris’ sister  (that was for you guys), Christian, Grace, Jasper, Arielle, and I all went to see Claire in ACT’s Christmas Carol playing Martha Crachit.  It was awesome to see her on stage, she was so good!  Earlier in the day, she got to go see Sean Astin (her favorite actor, he was Sam in Lord of the Rings if you didn’t know) do an interview for NBC (and meet him) as a birthday present from her dad.  Speaking of interviews, she was on the news for being in Christmas Carol; they interviewed four kids from it.  Anyway, after the show, we all went with Claire and another one of the kids in the show, Justin, and ate at Max’s.  That was really fun to eat with everyone, but the night was still young, so I suggested going bowling.  Surprisingly it happened, and everyone except Arielle and Justin went bowling from midnight until the bowling alley closed at one in the morning.  After that all the guys except for Trevor (wow this paragraph seems like it’s Survivor, someone keeps getting knocked off) came to my house for a sleepover.  The next day my dad said Brian was extremely polite (go figure!  Bungho!).

After the break, I want to get started really quickly with the student council.  I’ll talk to some of the representatives this week to see when they want the meetings to be.  I think we should have some sort of fun event to thank everyone for being a part of this and as a celebration of sorts for getting this process going, but to do that we’ll need money.  And we’re going to need money anyway, if we ever want to plan any kind of event.  We just have to have some sort of fundraiser that will want to make all of the rich Nueva parents want to donate mucho moolah.  We should also have a talent show I think.  At the first meeting I’m going to suggest having a secretary and see what people think.  We will need someone to take notes during meetings.  If you are on the council, get ready.  We’re going to be doing a lot next semester, and it will take commitment.  We’ll hopefully have a lot of meetings in January/February to get the ball rolling.  I’m excited about what we’ll be able to get done, it’ll be good.

~Adam

Good news… old news, but good news!  I made it through the first round of voting in student council.  It was actually the top 7 and not the top 6, because there was a tie.  We voted almost 2 weeks ago, the Tuesday before last.  Results were supposed to be last Monday, after Thanksgiving break, but Lorri wanted to get everyone’s votes, so didn’t announce results because everyone hadn’t voted.  The next day she was sick, and wasn’t at school, and then Wednesday we found out that since Nueva doesn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, and so we could deal with it at home instead of at school in front of everyone, she would call at home that night.  Everyone on IM let each other know within minutes anyway, so it’s not like that really worked .  It does make some sense, but it is so unlike the real world.  Even in my elementary school they announced the results in front of everyone.

Last weekend we flew to LA for Thanksgiving.  I got to see all 12 of my cousins except for one, who is taking a semester in Spain right now.  We played a lot of poker, and I came out with a good heap of winnings, about 10 dollars.  Thursday night we had Thanksgiving dinner with my mom’s side, Friday with my dad’s, and Saturday my dad’s side and the Gershon family had brunch.  You might have have heard of Gina Gershon, she’s a pretty famous actress, but most of her stuff is rated R, so I haven’t seen a lot of it.  Tracy Gershon was one of the judges on the first and second season of Nashville Star on USA (kinda the American Idol of country music; I don’t even really like country music and it had much better talent then AI).  Dan Gershon and my dad were best friends when they were kids, Tracy and my aunt were friends, and Gina, the baby of the family, always stopped by my dad’s house on the way home from school, made herself at home, and ate all of their food pretty much .  That was really fun, and Gina showed me how to make these two different color effects on my camera, Black & White and Sepia, so I got some cool shots with those.  If someone finds a really good free picture hosting site, maybe I’ll be able to PUT MY PICTURES UP!   I have a lot since Halloween that I haven’t been able to put up, and I know you are all dieing to see them.   You want to see all of my cousins right?

Last Friday was the Burlingame Holiday parade, and the all city dance.  Both were really fun.  The dance was a ton better then the last one.  Saturday was Jasper’s Bat Mitzvah (or as Brian calls it ‘Jasper’s Jewish thing’ jp jp ).  It was also my moms birthday, and so my parents went to SF.  After the service, I went to John’s house, went bowling with John and Grant, then went to Jasper’s party that night, which was a fun dance party at some house you can rent for parties.  After that I went back to John’s house and slept over there.

This week we have so much freakin homework.  It’s crazy.  I should so not be writing this now, I have a ton of work to do.  I haven’t worked on my recital project for a couple weeks now, and I haven’t even started my one application to Crystal.  I still haven’t figured out why I’m even applying there…  We have the bazaar Thursday, the science biology retest Thursday, the Japanese kanji test wednesday, art homework due tomorrow (which I just finished), and a science TEN MINUTE oral presentations on a primate (I’m doing the family Hylobatibae; genus Hylobate/Gibbon) using PowerPoint has to be ready tomorrow.  And I found out today I don’t even have PowerPoint on my computer .  I’m so screwed.  I only have like one slide done, and I need about ten.  This week will be hell, I can’t wait to get through it.

On a lighter note, today we had speeches and the final vote for representative.  I liked my speech, I thought it got a my points across pretty well.  It was interesting to hear people’s speeches, a lot of people had a very different take on it then I did.  I guess the speech was more important for me then other people because I needed to address some of the concerns people might have had about me, and I needed to wipe those doubts out.  We voted, and the vote really tore me up.  I had such a hard time deciding, I had to hurry up because Lorri wanted to clean up.  Lorri is going to seek out the people that were absent today to vote tomorrow, and hopefully she’ll call everyone tomorrow night.  It’s the moment of truth… wish me luck.

~Adam

PS. COMMENT!  Please?

…back to work…