My First Landing

Another nonperfect day in this nonperfect world called Earth. Today is going to be the best, but first, I need to eat. I open the fridge and it’s empty. It seems as if I forgot to go shopping. That’s okay. I’ll just head down to the bagel shop. As I walk in, I’m greeted by a man.

“Hello,” he says. I say hi back, and then he asks for my order. I tell him what I want: a toasted everything bagel. As he goes off to take my order, I take a seat at a nearby table. Suddenly, someone is sitting across from me.

“Hi, I’m Sadoñia. I’m here to guide you through this wonderful world.” That’s weird. I already live here. She then slides a book towards me. “Take a look,” she says, “and your bagel will be here soon.”

I cautiously open the book, and out of nowhere, I’m hit by a blast of magic that knocks me out. When I open my eyes, I seem to be in the same place, but Sadoñia is gone, and I DON’T HAVE MY BAGEL!!!! This place is not worth it. As I walk out, the ground beneath me rumbles, then suddenly cracks, and I fall in.

I’m awake, but where am I? Is this my house? I think so. I look at my alarm clock for the time. Oh no! I’m going to be late to school. As I’m getting ready, I notice that the book Sadoñia gave me is still open. If this book is magical, I wish it would take me to school. Suddenly, I see the book light up. Is it going to explode? I quickly look for cover, but I’m too slow. A blast of magic hits me, and I’m suddenly sitting at my desk in my classroom.

Weird. It seems as if the book is magical, and why does my head hurt so much? I feel like that has happened to me before. Then, a nice-looking person walks into the room. She looks just like my old teacher, but something’s definitely different. She introduces herself and then starts talking about schooling. That’s weird. Why would we change anything? We’re still on Earth, right?

The grades for elementary are 1st through 4th, and if you want, you can enroll your child in kindergarten. Pre-K is used if you want to give your child a better starting education. Preschool is used to get kids more social with other people. If a kid is having trouble in elementary, they get their own private tutor. That way, they can keep up before school gets complicated with middle school. That news won’t be shared unless the kid wants it to be. Middle school grades are 5th through 8th. Kids take 5th grade as a recap of 4th grade and an introduction to 6th. In 6th grade, if a kid wants to play on their school sports team, they HAVE to do something called team prep. If you don’t take team prep, you can’t play on the team. Once in 7th grade, you get to pick your electives. These are the choices: Theater/Musical Theater, Art, Music, Dance, Business, and Engineering. You get to pick three and drop a class. Based on their academic scores, a student can drop an academic class, but usually not. If the student did well enough in team prep, then they can go to play for the school. The choices for sports are basketball,  baseball, football, field hockey, tennis, gymnastics, lacrosse, swimming, and volleyball. There is one middle school team, but if the student is super good, they can start team prep for junior varsity.

Once the student is in 8th grade, they must take a cooking class. This is mandatory because cooking is a life skill. During 8th grade, if a student is having trouble with school, they get their own private tutor. That way, they can keep up before school gets complicated with high school. That news won’t be shared unless the kid wants it to be. Next up is 9th grade. In 9th grade, the student must keep taking cooking classes, but if they want, they can choose to take a baking class. The baking class will serve as an elective. You can do four electives, and their level gets harder as you go through grades. That way, you can be ready for when you get a job. 10th grade is the same as 9th, but when you get into 11th, the school offers job days, which makes your schedule more complicated. The way job days work is you get one week to try different jobs, and then at the end of the week, you pick the job you like and add it to your schedule. You have to be very careful with picking a job because this is the job you will stay with for life. Whenever you have a job day on your schedule, you don’t have any other classes. On job day, you will learn what to do in that job. 11th grade is the highest grade. There is no college. Well, that was a lot of information to take in, but I’m sure I won’t need any of it. I notice that everyone is leaving. Should I be leaving? I walk up to someone.

“Do you know where to go for our next class? They point across the hall. “Oh, ok, thank you,’’ I say, but they’re already gone. I walk up to the room. I’m greeted by a sign that says, Welcome to money class. I walk in and find a seat. This is going to be a long ride about money. Why do I even need to learn about this now? Shouldn’t I be in science class? On the other hand, I’m not looking forward to dissecting frogs.

The way money works is you get something called a key card. A key card is how you pay for things. In this world, you get different key cards depending on your age. When you are at the age of seven, you get a blue key card. This allows the kid to do things depending on their age, for instance. If a kid wants to go to a restaurant alone, they wouldn’t be able to. The way people would know is that they would scan the key card, the key card would light up red, and that area would be restricted unless they go with someone in a higher ranking. When the kid reaches eleven, they get a purple card. The purple card unlocks areas according to the kids’ ages. When the kid reaches eighteen, they get a red card. This is when they start to pay for things themselves. If a kid is in school, they will get a school card. The school will donate some money to the card depending on what job the student is focusing on. When a person wants to pay for something, the key card will atomically transport the exact amount of money to the person they are paying. Everything in this world costs money, but it’s very cheap, so that people can afford things. For example, if you wanted to buy a car it would be around eight hundred to one thousand dollars. Inflation is not a thing, and nobody lies about money. When kids get out of school, they are given the same amount of money to start their lives. That way, no one goes into debt.

Finally, it’s over. That took way too long. Now that that’s out of the way, I can go get some food. But where would I go? It’s not like I could skip school. Or maybe I could…. No, no, no. I would never do that. Five seconds later. So I decided to skip school—no big deal. Now, all I need to do is find a place to eat. I’ll just assume that there is a town in that creepy forest. As I walk through the forest, I get the creepy feeling that some old hag is watching me. Suddenly, I feel a burst of pain in the back of my head, and everything goes dark.

I’m awake. I think. Wait, is that a light? NO! It’s not my time. I’m not ready yet.  HELP! A dark figure appears.

“Relax, you’re not dead.”

I take a deep breath. “Then where am I?” The figure sighs.

“Don’t freak out or anything, but you might just be locked in a very old cabin that could fall apart just by the faint brush of the wind,” I scream internally. “AHHHHHH!” Or at least I tried to. The figure looks at me annoyed.

“I wasn’t done yet, and I was also going to say. It could fall apart by the force of a loud scream.” I look around

“When was this built?” I ask. The figure’s face lights up.

“Finally, someone asked. I’ve been dragging people here so that they would talk to me. You’re the…. fifth person”- I was getting freaked out.

“Just answer my question!”

“OKAY then. Old Betty here was built in 1301.” Wow, this place is older than I thought. I took a deep breath.

“So if I tapped old Betty, would she fall down?” The figure thought for a moment.

“Oh yes, you wouldn’t even have to try, see, one little tap and old Betty is done for.” So that’s exactly what I did. I tapped old Betty. And when she fell, I ran out of that forest as fast as I could.

The habitats here can be dangerous if you don’t know how to navigate. You don’t want to end up like that girl who met an old hag in the forest. Oh yes, the forest, that’s where we’ll start. There is one type of forest here. It’s called a Black Forest. They are the most dangerous habitats. They are roamed by old hags who want to lock you in their cabins that the faint blow of the wind could destroy. Everything in the Black Forest is either a shade of very, very dark green, gray, or black. The trees have few leaves, and the ground is covered in vines. The other type of habitat is the purple mountain. The mountains aren’t actually purple, but they get their name from some of the various purple flowers. I made my way out of the forest and kept walking. After about what felt like an eternity, I found civilization. Maybe they would have food. I made my way to the neighborhood gate and opened it. I was greeted by this guy named Gus. He showed me around the neighborhood.

Every person is given a starting house when they get out of high school, but they get to customize it. When they move out, the house is given to an elder, and then the cycle starts all over again.  If one person is living in a house, they can choose between a one-story house or a two-story house. They don’t get a three-story house because they would use up too much unnecessary space. That rule is the same for two to three people in a house. If four people are in a house, they can choose between a two-story house and a three-story house, which also applies to a family of five. Any family with six or more people can have a three-story house.

When Gus was done, he showed me to a red little house on the corner of the block. He said that this could be my house. I walk in and sit on the couch. Finally, I get to relax. As usual, I spoke too soon. You see, there was this book sitting next to me. The cover said, “A Totally Safe Book (Please Open).” So I did. You can imagine what happened next: I was hit by a blast of magic that, for some reason, didn’t knock me out. Instead, I found myself sitting on a chair in a bagel shop with my nose in a book. Huh? How strange.

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Wisdom tales is something I have been learning about in Language Arts. Wisdom tales are different kinds of stories including Fables, Parables, Fairy Tales, Tall Tales, Legends, Myths and Sagas. My class got to do a project on this where we picked a story and drew a comic on it. To help with that, an artist came to our school and showed us how to use basic shapes to create good drawings. It was very helpful.

For my story, I chose Empty Cup Mind. This story is about a student who went to an old man’s temple to gain knowledge. When he got there the man invited him in and asked if he wanted some tea. The student replied yes, but when the cup overflowed the student got super upset. The wise man told him to come back with an empty cup mind. For me, I think that the moral is to try to go into things with a clear mind.

To draw my comic I used an app called Sketchbook. Personally, I prefer Paperby 53 (the app) if I am sketching something out. In all, I had a really fun time learning about wisdom tales and how to draw with basic shapes. For me though, the comic was the BEST!

Image from Unsplash

“Everyone drop down and stay down.” It was a dark and stormy day. I was in my Language Arts classroom. Being forced to do a plank for an endless amount of time.  Thunder hit the walls as people struggled to stay in good form. Oh no! I was going down. first my knees, then my belly. Then my head. My head hurt for the rest of the day, but that was only because too much knowledge was being stuffed in me at school. That was what I thought was happening, but what was really happening was this.

It was a sunny day. My Language Arts teacher introduced us to daily habits. Her habit was planking. So our class decided to give it a try. We all took a book of some sort or maybe some padding to keep from falling. Then we started planking . It was only for 30 seconds. Not bad. When we all finished, we came back to our seats and went on with the lesson. It was just like my next Language Arts class, but there was something about it (🎶mysterious music in the background🎶) something was different. Ah that’s it! We added 30 more seconds. 

By then I was struggling to even stay off the ground. So while everyone else was doing great, I was in the corner of the room struggling. It was worth it though. And it was like this for all my Language Arts classes. Until one day (🎶Dramatic music in the background 🎶) It was time for the plank challenge.  Sadly for me, I was sick on that day. I did hear a lot of cool things about it though. Someone even said that there was a person who planked for seven minutes!

He never underestimates

Slowly turn back

Yes

I whisper

I am

The

Fire

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I have about 300 books in my house, way too many books for me to read. Most of them aren’t even mine, you see my mom’s a doctor so most of the books in our house are about medical stuff. To me that seems sort of boring. Though 300  may seem like a lot of books, it’s not! I mean I have books, I just don’t read them. None of them are really good. They’re just about girls who meet each other and then become sisters. That’s cool I guess.

But there was this one time when I read this really good book by Erin Hunter. It’s called Warrior Cats. You may have heard about it. It’s pretty good. There’s about thirty books in the series. If you like fantasy, then this book is for you. Although it does have a lot of suspense, the plot and story line are both fantastic! You do need a quiet space to read this book. It also requires advanced reading skills but you should stick with it. 

You know how sometimes you want to do something, like you really want to do something, but you don’t know what. That’s why I’m thankful  books are a thing. The only annoying thing is finding a book, especially for me. I will take hours just to find a book. When I find a book I usually don’t like it, so that’s fun. I guess it’s good to have a bunch of books, even though I usually read online. I’m glad that I have all the reading supplies that I need. It makes it so much easier to read.

HEADS UP THIS BOOK IS SAD!

Today I will be talking about a book called Dear Rosie and telling if it’s a window or a mirror. First we have to know what a window is. A window is something that doesn’t relate to you. A mirror is something that does relate to you. This book is about a girl named Millie and her friends. They are trying to navigate losing a very special person.

So while this girl named Millie is working in her family’s shop, someone comes in and leaves a mysterious book on the counter. When the shop closes she decides to look through it. Then she remembers that this could be someone’s personal information. The next day when she goes to school her and her friends decide to celebrate their past friends birthday. And when she goes home to work at the store that her family owns the notebook is still there so she decides to go through it. When she’s done she finds out that it’s her friend’s old notebook. So the next day she shows it to her friends. They are all determined to find out where it came from and what it means. So that night they follow a map in the notebook and find an abandoned mine. They decide to go back home because it’s a school night. Millie just can’t wait to find out this whole mystery so she sets back off to the mine alone. There she finds something amazing. Inside the mine there is a wall that says ROSIE in bold pink bubble letters. Surely Rosie wrote this before she died. When she goes back to school she takes her friends to this place. They are all sure that Rosie did this. This book is a window for me. First of all I don’t have a friend that died. Second of all, my family does not own a store, but I think this book is very good.