Saturday, February 15, 2014

Movies I've watched


-Frozen
-Home Alone (1,2,3)
-Standing Up
-Enchanted
-Snow (1,2) 
-Snow Men
-Yours, Mine & Ours
-Rainbow Tribe
-Escape From Planet Earth
-Spy Kids (1,2,3,4)
-The Italian Job
-I'll Be Home For Christmas
-Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves
-The Lorax
-Hercules (Disney's version)
-Monsters Inc.
-Daddy Day Care
-Daddy Day Camp
-Babysitters Beware
-Are We There yet? (the movie, not the TV show)
-Spy School
-Monkey Trouble
-Spymate
-Like Mike 2
-Paranorman
-Despicable Me
-Despicable Me 2
-Leave It To Beaver (TV show and movie. Beaver is actually a kid)
- My Neighbor Totoro
- Children Of Heaven
- Up On Poppy Hill
- Free Willy (1,2,3,4)
- Dolphin Tale
- Castle In The Sky 
- The magic of Belle Isle
- Charlie Chaplin (all of them)
- Hugo
- Kiriku
- Azur & Asmar
- The Croods
- Sammy: A turtles tale
- Happy feet
- Happy feet 2

Harlem Globetrotters


 My favourite basketball team came to Brooklyn! My mom brought me to a game of the Harlem Globetrotters at the Barclays Center! I had received the ticket on January 15th (my birthday) from my mom as a birthday present and I was really pumped to go.
At the end of the game, I got a Harlem Globetrotters' ball and I got it signed by Bull, one of my favourite guys on the team. The players weren't all there, but the whole team's names are Ant, Big Easy, Bones, Buckets, Bull, Cheese, Dizzy, Firefly, Flight Time, Flip, Hacksaw, Hammer, Handles, Hawk, Hi-Lite, Jet, Moose, Prince, Quake, Scooter (another favourite), Slick, Stretch, The Shot, Sweet J, Thunder, TNT, Too Tall (he's not tall at all, he is 5'2"), and finally, T Time. They are not in the NBA, meaning they are just an entertaining team that shows off a lot (really, they do, I saw it with my own eyes) and I really, really like them! They do incredible stunts, like flips and jumps,  and turn basketball into an acrobatic sport. They always win the games, which is pretty awesome.
But they also crack a lot of jokes and make fun of the other teams (in this game, they called a short guy 'the baby') which isn't a really good sign of sportsmanship, but they do it for the entertainment.
This, down here, is Ant standing on the hoop. He dances on it a bit and then he acrobatically jumps off during the trick shot challenge while the time is running!





















This is the glass heart from Urban Glass along with the spare glass pieces



Sunday, February 9, 2014

Making Glass

Yesterday, my mom and I went to a place called Urban Glass to make a glass heart for Valentine's day. First, you'd have to dig a heated metal pole in a furnace with molten glass at the bottom. The temperature of the furnaces is around 4000 degrees Fahrenheit: enough to keep the glass liquid-like! You have to keep turning the glass when it's on the pole to keep it balanced and to shape it for maximum perfection.
My heart came out to be red (as a heart should be!) but we could could chose among many colors. We used tools like pliers and (giant) tweezers, diamond  shears and we had to wear safety goggles. We had to remove our fleece sweaters because they are highly flammable (good to know, when you are cooking...).
After we were done with the heart, I asked the instructor if she could make me a little bit of thin glass sticks that I would be able to melt and shape over a candle flame and of course, the answer was yes. She quickly got a blob of molten glass and colored it orange, and artfully stretched it out, cut it, and gave it to me to take home. I experimented with glass and a candle all night.
The experience was awesome and my mom told me about glass factories in Murano, and showed me Youtube videos of people making incredible and beautiful artistic objects with glass. I noticed that in the videos of Murano, there was a lot of glass-blowing to inflate the object to create hollow things such as goblets, vases, bowls, and chandeliers. My grandma has a large chandelier over her dining table at her house that is very well-manufactured and it looks gorgeous! After this trial class, I look at glass very differently and start to notice it more and I think about how it was made. I find this topic very interesting and hope to take more classes later on and learn the skills of my ancestors (I am Italian and my grandmother was born in Venice).




Frozen after school

On the real day of my birthday (January 15th) I was picked up early from school by my mom for a doctor's appointment but after the appointment, we thought we would catch a movie at the theatre. So we did, and we watched the movie called Frozen (recommended by most of my friends who've seen it) and it was great! My favourite character was Olaf, the snowman, whom I found very, very funny! The song that Olaf sings about summer has not gotten out of my head since I've seen Frozen.
This movie is a Musical, so there is a lot of singing. When I say a lot, I mean almost everytime they ask a question or think about something, unlike real people. For example, real people in real life do not sing to the waiter to ask for a burger in a restaurant.
In a Musical, they do.
Some people might find the singing annoying or awkward but in this movie, the singers have great voices and the songs are well-composed therefore, I didn't find it annoying at all. My favourite song was the Summer Song by Olaf (I inserted the clip down below) and I liked the part where Elsa makes a giant ice castle in the deserted mountains! I would like to be able to do the same.




Sunday, January 26, 2014

Happy New Year!

It’s 2014 and I turned ten on the fifteenth of January. I’m in the D.D.D (double digits division) but no wrinkles yet! I had a fun birthday party on the 20th of January. First, about seven of my friends with siblings and parents came to my house to eat some cake that my mom bought from Rocco’s bakery in Manhattan. We also drank coke, pink lemonade, Fanta and normal lemonade. After an enjoyable time at my house, we went ice skating at Prospect Park’s renovated ice skating rink called Lakeside. I like ice skating because it makes me feel like I’m flying! We all had a great time ice skating there but at the end, one of my friends sprained her wrist: luckily it wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been! Phew! After the party, we all went home to snooze our tiredness out.