After school expeditions

equestri vitam5 Comments

I hadn’t planned on blogging again until after my Rome experience but I must share to you all about my day today.

First, after school I walked through downtown and got delicious Gelato. A cono piccolo with menta and nutella. If you haven’t assumed already, I’ll let you know that it was freaking delicious! So to start that put me in an excellent mood for the evening. After I finished my delectable gelato my host dad picked me up to go home, or so I thought…

We were heading up to the mountains behind our neighborhood. I asked my host dad what we were doing and he explained to me that we were going to see my Nonno’s(grandpa’s) farm. We arrived to the farm and greeted Nonno.

He then took me into the bottom floor of the farm house where I found his small winery! I always knew that my family made their own wine but I never knew how or where. Turns out that they do it five minutes away from home. Nonno explained to me the whole process of the wine making which is quite simple.

First all the harvested grapes are put into a big grinder and all the mushed grapes go into a wooden barrel. When the barrel is full there is a lid that with a crank pushes all the juice out of the barrel into a bucket. All the juice that goes into the bucket is put into bottles for a long time to ferment and become wine. I tried some of the grape juice before it’s fermented into wine and it’s absolutely delicious! Naturally very sweet and refreshing.

After viewing the wine process we walked through the farm to pick grapes and tomatoes. Which are all organic without pesticides or anything of the sort. The grapes are so yummy to snack on. Read More »

Collages

kirbyfullyloadedLeave a comment

I’ve decided that I really enjoy making collages.

There’s a free app for the iPhone called InstaCollageFree that lets you make super cool compositions.

Electing to exercise my assembling talents on my friends, I made a series of Catalina Sea Camp collages to pass time.

Sonia Grunwald, Melissa Ballard, Ursula Granirer, Isabel Kirk, Alex Dierking, Brooke Browning, Kimmery Galindo, Roxi Harvey, & me

The app gives you a bunch of different frames you can just load your pictures into.  I personally like the one that looks like a postcard, with a stamp reading, “True Love” in the corner.

You can adjust the background color and the color of the lines between the pictures.Read More »

Mac Miller

callmemaybe32Leave a comment

After over a year of waiting one of my favorite musical artists was finally playing near me.

 Before school started I was just surfing the web, looking for some concerts I may want to go to this year, and there were a few, but none that got my attention as much as “Mac Miller at the Santa Barbara Bowl.”

I immediately called my friends who shared the same interest in Mac Miller, and we made the decision to purchase our tickets well in advance to make sure that we were at this concert that we had been waiting for for so long.

It may seem weird to be so excited about a musician coming, but Mac, being so young and new, usually only played small shows close to his hometown of Pittsburgh, PA.

Every once in a while Mac and his crew ventured out to the west coast, but still not anywhere I could have gotten to easily.

This past Saturday was the day we had all been waiting for.

Finally, my friends and I were going to see Mac Miller, and it was everything I had wished it to be.

For those of you who don’t know Mac Miller or “Malcom James McCormick is an up and coming rap sensation.

At the age of 15 Mac knew he was going to make it in the music industry, and so he did.

Back then he went by “EZ Mac” instead of Mac Miller, but none the less, still a great rapper.

Mac released his first mix tape in 2007 at the age of 15 called “Mackin’ Ain’t Easy” and from there went on to producing his most current album, “Blue Slide Park.”

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Moving Forward

callmemaybe321 Comment

After the OVS football team came home with an outstanding victory in Lee Vining, that winning streak did not continue this past Saturday.

After our return we had a week to prepare for our next game against Hillcrest Christian of Thousand  Oaks, California. During this week practice seemed to be filled with not only focused faces and hard work, but excitement and laughter after the team had just broken a new Ojai Valley School record of being the first team to win a varsity football game.

It seemed that the win may have gotten to the heads of some players, myself included, and that if we beat that team, that we would probably be able to carry that win into the next game.

Although the game did not put another W on the Ojai Valley School’s standings it did teach the team a valuable lesson, a lesson our coaches were trying to instill in us all week.

Yes we won, but that is just one game, and that while we should be happy we won, there was still plenty of work. In practice Coach D said that yes we did play well, but we need to be better, the word better was repeated over, and over, and over, but apparently in this game our opponent ended up with the better score, which means, they won.

While many of us wanted to walk off of the field with our heads down, we had to keep them up, and come back to our next game playing even better than the first and second.

This past loss has given the team a reality check that while we did play well the first game, and this is not to say we did not play well on Saturday, that we do indeed need to be better.

Our next game is Saturday night against the Maricopa Indians.

This game will be very special for the team because we get to play in the Indian’s stadium arena at night under the lights.

This next coming week of practice is going to be tough, but it will only give us more time to sharpen our minds, and sharpen our plays, because come Saturday it will hopefully be time to put another win up on the boards for this team of new records.

Hopefully we can show everyone that we do deserve to play, and shatter the harsh words that some put on OVS football, like the program should be cancelled because “we aren’t good.”

To all of the people who doubt our team or speak I’ll of us, I ask you to come out and try to do what we do everyday, and see after that what you think about the fact that we aren’t good or that we don’t deserve to play.

If you have to win all the time to be worth it, than sports would not be what they are, nobody would ever win because everyone would be just as good as the other. And if we are to follow in this thought that winning is the only reason to play, than nobody would be able to play because winning would become impossible.

Empty Stadium

If any of you would like to know what it is like to go through what a football team goes through together, I beg you to come out on to the field everyday, put on your helmet and pads, run around in the heat, get beaten and battered, and then return from a loss, and hear, “wow who could have seen that coming,” in a sarcastic tone.

Hopefully we can better ourselves from this game and have the season of all seasons. If you can come out and support at any of our games it would be greatly appreciated. And to all of you who doubt us I really hope we can change your minds at some point, and if not try and keep it to yourself.

Eagles-Giants/Don’t get much better!

backinphilly1 Comment

Well that was really disgusting.

Honestly, I was very concerned about this game going in. The Eagles and Giants squared off tonight in an epic battle for the division. Man, it really wasn’t pretty.

The entire first half was scoreless until the 2 minute warning where Michael Vick connected with DeSean Jackson for a touchdown pass. Then the Giants quickly made their way down the field to notch a field goal of their own.

7-3 at the half. Advantage Eagles.

Fast forward to the last 15 seconds, the Eagles could have completely screwed themselves out of a victory.

But they didn’t.

Giants kicker Lawrence Tynes lined up for a game-winning field goal. The score is 19-17 and Tynes has a 54 yard kick to give the Giants the W.

He misses wide! Game over! Eagles win!….NO!!!!!!

There is a popular occurrence in the NFL known as “Icing the Kicker”. This act is when a head coach calls a timeout right before a kicker is about to make his kick. However, the timeout is used exactly as the long snapper snaps the ball to the holder. The kicker will then take the kick, yet it will not count.

Unfortunetly, Mr. Fatass…i mean Reid gave Tynes a second shot.

Thank God Tynes screwed it up again. This time, he didn’t put enough into the kick, and it fell about 3 yards short.

This time, the Eagles really did win.

I’m not going to go into a lot of detail about this one. There weren’t a lot of stats that really stood out to me.

I’ll explain more next week. I’m just freaking out that Tynes sucks. That’s all!

Next post, I’m going to discuss something completely amazing. Brian Dawkins is finally gone, and he deserves his own post. Till next time, I’m going to do Spanish.

Adios!

Democalypse!

smackyjackjack1 Comment

I’m calling it.

332-206.

That’s what the electoral college will read at the end of the presidential election, with Obama taking the win.

To me, this is the better of two outcomes. The term “lesser of two evils” comes to mind, but hey, that’s just the consequences of a two party system and an indirect democracy.

The two party system that America has into place is a way to funnel your choices down to two people you almost certainly disagree with. It is almost impossible for someone to agree entirely with Obama, or entirely with Romney. Even if you did agree with them 100%, it is then their work ethic that comes into play.

For example, I agree with Obama that Guantanamo Bay needs to be closed ASAP. In fact, I agree with him that it should have been done 4 years ago…Anyways, to me, the US needs to stop its weird romance with torture prisons and secret “interrogation techniques”, but that’s for another blog. My point is that while you may agree with a candidate, you may not agree with the way they get things done (or don’t get things done).

Another thing that I don’t like about the election system is how much it all depends on character. Many voters decide who to vote for just based of who they relate to more. Well hell, I don’t know about any of you, but I don’t want a president like me. If he was anything like me, we’d be taken over by Canada in a matter of days. I’d want someone smarter, stronger, and just all out better than me.

Now that I’ve gotten way off topic, I’d like to ask you who you believe is going to win, and by how much? What’s your count for the college?

My Best Friend

Daphne PsaledakisLeave a comment

At the age of two, my parents took me to visit my aunt and uncle at their ranch in Montana. We were sitting on the lawn waiting for them to arrive, and I got up and walked into the pasture. Instead of jumping up to save me, my parents decided to stay put and see what would happen.

I eventually began learning to ride, first in a western saddle at Bar 20 Ranch in Montana, but once we moved to London for two years I switched to an English saddle. It’s been 12 years now, and I’ve gone from barely being able to sit on a horse to jumping 3’9″ fences.

I got my first pony when I was eight, and it was the horse I’d been riding for two or three years at the time. I woke up Christmas morning, at the crack of dawn to the disappointment of my parents, and we opened the presents under the tree. Then my mom suggested we go to the barn to give Razz, the horse, some Christmas carrots. When we got there, my trainer led her out of her stall. She had a red bow stuck to her forehead and streamers around her neck. She was my Christmas present.

I rode Razz until she was too old to continue competing, and then we retired her to my aunt and uncle’s ranch. From there came a couple other ponies, all of whom I loved dearly but outgrew quickly. And then finally I graduated to a horse, Time.

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Five seconds

displacedlocalLeave a comment

One
Your heart pulses
Your muscles prepare for the explosion of force that explodes from your muscles.
You take a breath in
Your mind does a quick recap of your preparations
Your body is ready
Two
A huge push
A signal from your brain reaches the muscles in your legs
The muscles expand throwing you off the ledge
The tendons in your knees expand and contract
Gravity is no longer a boundary
Your brain works tirelessly sharpening the senses
Three
The brisk air flies by your face
you feel weightless
Gravity again grips at your feet
Your brain again fears the earth and prepares itself for impact
Your legs reach out for land
The ledge comes into sight
You close your eyes for the last moment of bliss
Four
Contact
Your muscles absorb the shock
You roll from the balls of your feet, throwing your weight forward
The earth is cold and it grips to your hand
Your brain recovers from the impact bringing blood back to the extremeties to heal
You stand and open your eyes
Five
You let out a sigh of relief
You are alive
You look back at your accomplishment
a ten foot gap cleared
back to work

Mis amigas, Te amo.

moustachulousLeave a comment

Five years of summer camp and four years of school at OVS, you make tons of friends. The great thing is that since OVS is so much fun, most people will come back and you get to see them again and again. Even when they leave, they have an impact in your life and you never forget them. I have had so many friends over the years, but the ones that have stuck with me at OVS until the end are the ones I am closet to.

If you know me, than obviously you would have to know Ali, my best friend. I have known her for 5 years and we actually met at summer camp. To be honest, I didn’t like her that much at first. Then 8th grade year, we just kind of connected and ever since then we have been inseparable. We have had our fights of course, but we just can’t be apart. As she says, “Jenna, you are my brain.” We always make jokes about how we know what the other is thinking. Some people don’t like Ali, but I don’t care. Honestly, if anyone ever tries to say anything bad about my best friend or hurts her, they might end up with a black eye. Or maybe some spiders/lizards in their bed. Just saying. Anyways, she is the greatest and funniest person ever. I can never get tired of her sense of humor.
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Exploring Outside the Walls of Viterbo

equestri vitamLeave a comment

The past three days I spent on a school orientation trip outside of Viterbo. The fact that anywhere I go in this country is absolutely beautiful like no other is still so surreal and overwhelming to me. I don’t think we came upon any ugly place, not even while driving through the more industrial cities! Everything is just incredible no matter where you are.

All 68 students plus faculty loaded up onto our huge double decker bus Thursday morning and took off to our first stop, south of Viterbo, a city called Sermonetta.

It is a medieval city just like Viterbo but much smaller. The name Sermonetta contains “monetta” which can be translated to coin, and it is said that money was coined there. Also during the Dark Ages it was a used as a fortress for the Pope.

Steps up to the Castle of Sermonetta

Our next stop was at the Gardens of Ninfa. The Gardens are located on the ruins of the old city of Ninfa. But the city was brought to an end, by whats called the Papal civil war of the 14th century. Ninfa was brought to its original glory in the 20th century by the Italian Republic named as a Natural Monument in 2002.

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