Speech Season

Speech season.  Perhaps you've heard of it?  Mayhap you have, yet you have not understood the full entirety of it's meaning.  The above is a picture taken at a recent tournament at the Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego.  Speech season is exactly how this picture appears: crowded, full of kids, full of talent, and overwhelming.  But don't get me wrong, I love these tournaments.  In fact, I look forward to them and relish every moment of my being there.  It is an opportunity for me to meet and watch like-minded homeschooled kids.  We thoroughly enjoy it.

As it is my first year in speech, I only have three events to give (a duo interpretation done with my sister---we are giving it on Peter Pan---a humorous interpretation---on a girl learning how to drive---and impromptu---where I get two minutes to prepare a five minute speech on a random topic).  Olivia and I have done relatively well; we have qualified to go to the National Invitational Tournament of Champions (NITOC) in our Peter Pan duo.  However, in the four tournaments we have gone to, we have failed to make it into the final eight of the duos at the tournament.  We have one last tournament in Modesto---we shall be leaving for that this coming Tuesday---and that is our goal.  As it is unlikely that we shall go to NITOC because we've only qualified in one event, this Modesto tournament shall be the last one of this season.  We are anxious to do as well as possible.

SO the last few days have been filled with revamping of our speeches, looking over our ballots and figuring out how we can do better than we have in the past.  Wish us luck!  

The Olympics!

For those of you who are not aware of this simple fact, my family is addicted to the Olympics.  And when I say "addicted", I mean ADDICTED.  The moment we hear the thrilling drumbeats on the television, I do not exaggerate when I say that ALL. LIFE. STOPS.  It wouldn't matter if you were going through a midlife crisis and were contemplating suicide, we would tell you to wait for the commercial break.  (Perhaps this is unkind of me.  What I mean to say is, we would be fully sympathetic and reference you to some sort of psychologist, and then turn back around and continue watching the Games.)

The air-time of these Olympics MUST have been designed with our family in mind.  From midnight till about one o'clock in the afternoon, they do not air any of the competition and---as frustrating as this is---it offers us the opportunity to actually get stuff done.  But the TV is almost always on, just in case some sort of special extra coverage appears.  We don't want to miss ANY detail.

Last night, my mom and I were the few, the faithful, and the brave in the Andrade house, as everyone else was sleeping.  We masterfully stayed awake till the very end, watching the Americans receive four medals already!  One gold, one silver, and two bronze.  The most exciting race of the night without a doubt was watching Apolo Ohno and teammate, J.R. Celski, race in a short track speed skating event.  If you have not watched this event, I strongly encourage you to.  It is one of the most thrilling during the Games.  I will not tell you what happened DURING the race (because you should have stayed up to watch it), but you know that the two Americans medaled.  Yay!  

During a commercial break (that is the only time we speak), my mom and I discussed the difference between winter and summer athletes.  The biggest thing is that all the winter sports are dangerous.  They all involve skating over ice on knives or plummeting down a steep slope at speeds that surpass 90 mph or flying into the air at the height of a five story building.  And there is always the possibility of dying.  In the summer Olympics, the most dangerous thing is probably marathon running, where you can get dehydrated.  The winter athletes deal with possible death EVERY time they go for a training run.  As I have never been skiing or snowboarding, I cannot say why they do what they do.  I only know that the athletes love what they do and always are ready to get back on their skates or skis and defy death again.

Rain, Rain, You're Here To Stay

What had been an abysmally dry winter is so no longer. For the past week we have experienced and almost continual outpouring of rain. Perhaps what's even better is the fact that it should continue to rain well through Sunday afternoon. There is something about just sitting back on a couch, wrapped in a warm blanket with a glass of hot tea in hand, watching the droplets dash themselves against the windowpanes. A sense of utter peace settles over one. We feel content and perfectly comfortable spending the entire day indoors, going nowhere. Rain has the ability to make us slow down our frantic pace of life and sit back and take a breather. Perhaps that it one reason of why I so enjoy it when it rains.

Ah, I see I truly am born in the wrong century. It is times like these---when the house is dark with nothing but the fire to light the rooms and calm and soothing music ("rain" music) is playing---when I am seized with a desire to put on a dress and either bake some culinary delight or sit down and scratch out a few paragraphs of my story on yellowed paper with a quill pen. (I have no idea where one can even find a quill pen these days; it has always been a great ambition of mine to learn how to make my own pen and ink. How gloriously old-fashioned that sounds!)

Now, for some exciting news. My mother and I went to an old bookstore and found a treasure: eight books written by Louisa May Alcott with sweet, pale green binding and ink illustrations. The best part? We only paid $24 for them all! I am excessively pleased with this find. Nothing is better than reading an old book, except for reading an old book with tea and a scone.

Rain always puts me in a bookish mood. It never fails. Perhaps that would explain why I just requested two books from the library ("The Railway Children" and "The Story of the Treasure-Seekers", both of them by E. Nesbit). They have been favorites of mine since I heard them read aloud in fourth or fifth grade. (They also happen to be set in England in the 1900s about the escapades of the children trying to win a fortune for their family.) So here I blissfully sit, mug of tea beside me, listening to the patter of the rain about me and waiting for that mechanical call from the library.

I love rainy days!

Deck Those Halls

Christmas is a holiday that is most looked forward to in our household.  It is our favorite season because we have so many beautiful decorations to put for it.  

The weekend after Thanksgivings finds us packing away all of our Fall decorations---including our Fall music---and dragging box after box of Christmas ornaments and decorations up from our basement.  The first day of December was heralded with us blasting Christmas music defiantly to the 80 degree weather outside.  It has been my sister and my fervent wish that one day we would have snow Christmas morning.  We had a sprinkling of snow last year and are supposed to have some next week.  Oh, what bliss!  To awaken to snow falling lightly through the trees and frosting over our yard.  We are ready for it.  We have an ample supply of firewood, cider, and our tree is lit and decorated.

Yes, it is only December 5th and we already have our tree up in our living room and festooned with lights and ornaments.  The weekend after Thanksgiving saw us in the parking lot of Home Depot with our Nana and Abuelito, ready to pick out a tree.  It usually takes us a good forty-five minutes to an hour to choose the "one" and undoubtedly, it will be the one that we first laid eyes one.  

Last year, the helpers of Home Depot threw themselves into our Christmas choosing whole-heartedly.  They held the trees, spun them, lifted them, carried them thither and fro, and offered general comments and opinions.  This year, the big elves of the Christmas lot were not as helpful as they had been in past years.  We were left to do much of the lifting, carrying, and spinning to ourselves.  We searched and searched through the bins of trees, yet we could find none to our satisfaction.  Suddenly, mom inched towards me, hissing, "Hannah!  Look at those people over there!  I think they just pulled out our tree."

I glanced over at the customers examining the tree.  It was tall, with well-placed branches, and was the perfect shape.  The word of the "perfect tree" passed through the Andrade ranks like wildfire.  Quickly and quietly, we began to edge forward, pressing in and about them.  I think we must have overwhelmed them, for they began to ever so slowly, slip away.  The tree was ours!  Victory was ours.

Can You Scratch That Off Your Flow?

Debate season is here.  Oh joy.  Debate season.  Not only that, but I have my first debate "tournament" on Monday.  Be still my beating heart.

     

Well, I have had just over five weeks of "debate intensive".  The coach of our club has gone through with the newbies and broken everything down into understandable sections.  We have created a case, formed teams, and are going to go against each other in two rounds of in-club debating.  One round is an hour and a half long.  That is three hours of debating.  As our coach says, "The best way to learn to swim is to jump in the water feet first."  I always hear this saying, but everyone neglects to mention that there are those who drown before they figure it out.  

Although we have had five weeks to be quite literally submersed in the lingo and happenings of debate, I still find myself confused by all the terminology.  Our coach calls it "debate speak" and some of the debaters in the club are better at speaking in the debate language than in regular English.  It seems like I'm always hearing, "I'd like to address their third Inherency point in our Solvency, after I've provided a link-turn to show that their Advantages are actually DA's."  Or "Judge, the Affirmative team has dropped our arguments regarding the significance and topicality arguments---which are major voting issues---so you can just carry that through the flow."  Now, I'm sure many of you are thinking what I'm thinking when I hear this, which is: WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT???

I still am a bit confused, but hopefully everything will turn out all right in the end.  Again, as they say, the best way to learn is to jump right in.  We all have permission to fail, so that is alright.  I don't think anybody really expects anything mind-bogglingly amazing from us, so we should be safe.  I will update on Monday to let you know how I survived the lion's den.

As British As Afternoon Tea And Biscuits

"You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me."~C.S. Lewis

A sure sign of fall and the approaching of winter is when you can see an Andrade bent over a cup of tea and immersed in a good book.  Sure, this happens often during the summer but it happens almost constantly as the chill months set in.  There is nothing better than sitting by a fire, wrapped in a blanket with rain pouring outside, reading a good book, and drinking tea.  Nothing better.

I am convinced that my family was supplanted from a sweet cottage in the UK and brought here to America where we had our memory erased and were led to believe that we were native Americans.  But I think that is lies.  All lies.  We are as British as afternoon tea and biscuits.  If souls have a language I know that mine speaks Gaelic and that my family's at least speak with a British accent.  

We have a deep-rooted love in Jane Austen, tea and scones, and good books set in England.  Currently, there is one book that my mother is in love with.  It is one that she has laughed and cried over.  I have only got so far as the laughing part, but she says there is still time.  I may yet cry over it.  Whether I shed tears or not, I cannot disagree with the fact that it is an incredibly well-written book.  If you are in need of a good read, allow me to recommend this one to you.  It is "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society" by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows.  It is a collection of letters during the 1940s in London and that is all I will say about it.  Except that it is amazing.  And that you should read it.  The characters grew into my mother's best friends in the week she took to read it.  

Ah, winter.  The time when Jane Austen quotes fly thick and fast off the tongue and the house smells perpetually of fresh-baked scones.  Some sort of old movie (such as "Pride and Prejudice", "Sense and Sensibility", "The Secret Garden", "Little Women", or "Beauty and the Beast") is playing or music from "Little Women".  These are common signs of the chill seasons in the Andrade household.

College Credit

This morning we received the news.  I had gotten an A on my first college essay.  The teacher's standards were rigorous and I had worked diligently on my paper.  At best I assumed that I would get a B, a high-scoring B but a B nonetheless.  Usually a straight-A student, for my first semester taking a college credit class I was content with that.

The purpose of the essay was to analyze the movie "Smoke Signals" (directed by Chris Eyre, Miramax, 1998) which was based upon the journey of two Native American men.  While the film presented some compelling arguments regarding the cause and effect of alcoholism on a family, it was not particularly well-done.  

There is nothing harden than writing an essay regarding something you do not even entirely like.  However it was a growing process for me, and I wrote and wrote and crossed out and erased and wrote some more.  Mom helped me, which I was grateful for.  Doubtless a good part of my A can be attributed to her.

With our joint effort, I managed to scrape up an A which I am excessively pleased about.  Hard work certainly pays off!