The Great Fishing Contest of Sala-ma-sond

I don't really have much to write about today, my test is on thursday and I spent the entire morning studying (shocking, I know). I didn't want to leave you with nothing so I decided to share a story that I found a while back when I was cleaning my room.
The story is part of an assignment about children's literature that I did when I was in 9th grade.
Part of the assignment was writing a sequel to the book, the message of the sequel had to be the same as the one in the original story(I picked the book Yertle the Turtle..).
and now without further ado, I give you the story of The Great Fishing Contest of Sala-ma-sond.

On the far away island of Ikker-mic-plop lived an old fisherman named Mr. Micphlopp. Mr. Mcphlop lived in a little cottage near the edge of the sea right near the giant picklenut tree. Everyday Mr. Micphlopp would 

sit in his boat out on the sea under the shade of the picklenut tree.

One day just as Mr. Micphlopp was dozing off he heard a funny noise and looked up, he saw a little green boat coming his way. Mr. Micphlopp did not like it when people woke him up so he stood up and hollered "who is that in the little green boat disturbing my day?" the man in the little green boat yelled back "call me Ishmael. I'm on my way to see my uncle jack, because you see I am the greatest fisherman that there could ever be". Mr. Micphlopp got very confused and said "sir Ishmael you must be mistaken for that position by me has already been taken" Ishmael laughed and said "well then come to the fishing contest at sala-ma-sond and we shall see who the kind of the fisherman shall be".

So Mr. Micphlopp and Ishmael sailed away and arrived at the pond the very next day. There were five contestants in all, Mr. Micphlopp, Ishmael, Fisherman Freddie, Jacob, and Max. Jacob and Max came from the hills beyond sala-ma-sond, Fisherman Freddie was from fish-a-lot-pond, Mr. Micphlopp came from Ikker-mic-plop, and Ishmael did not.

All the contestants went for a walk and while they were walking they began to talk. Each had a story about their biggest fish and each claimed to be the best fisherman in the world. They were walking along when they came across a turtle stuck in a bush. The turtle looked around and asked for some help but the fishermen 

were too busy fighting about who was the best so no one did help.

The fishermen decided that it was time to go. As they turned around to take their leave the turtle said "wait Let me tell you a story about a selfish turtle named Yertle. Yertle used to be king of this pond he was the ruler of sala-ma-sond, but Yertle the turtle decided that he wanted to be the ruler of all. He wanted to rule everything from the grass to the trees to my old uncle's knees. Yertle the turtle was greedy and always wanted more, he would not listen to us and thought only of himself. They say that it was because he was so selfish that he fell to the floor, and so Yertle the turtle is king no more. That is the story of Yertle my friends

learn from its' moral, it's not too late to make amends.

Four of the fisherman walked off in a huff, for the story of Yertle they believed was a bluff. But Ishmael the fisherman thought for a while and then he helped free the turtle with a big smile. The turtle whose name was mack said "thank you, kind sir" and put on his hat. Ishmael said good bye and raced back to his boat for the contest was about to begin, but Ishmael no longer cared who would win.

Mr. Micphlopp told his grandson named Tim. On the day of the contest Ishmael did learn, to be happy with what he had and for more not to yearn. I too learned a very important lesson that day, the fun isn't in winning it's in how you play.

The End.

I hope you enjoyed my story. :) 

I'm off to do another practice test! 4 more days!!!!! :)

Birthday Weekend Extravaganza

Hello!
I hope you all had a great weekend! I know I did! :P
Everyone had lots of fun and the cupcakes were a success!!
This morning we had a nice brunch full of sushi, salads, and mimosas. After lunch we played a game of settlers (which eema won..) and then everyone went to take naps.
Later in the afternoon we went to visit Saba and Savta, it was so nice to see them and I think that they really enjoyed spending time with their great-grandchildren.
When we got home we had a delicious BBQ with grilled chicken, meat, potato salad, and mojitos. I ate a majority of the meat which I found quite tasty. :)
I know this post is really short so I'll leave you with this picture of a lemur that I met at the zoo a couple of months ago.

I like to call him Ralph.

Everyone is packing up to go home and it's getting pretty late so I think I'm gonna start getting ready for bed.
Good Night!!
See you tomorrow!

Cupcakes?

Since it's my sisters birthday weekend I thought it would be fun to make her some super special cupcakes. After much thought and consideration I decided to try and make mojito cupcakes. Someone sent me the recipe a couple of months ago but I was waiting for a special occasion, and what says happy birthday more than booze filled cupcakes?

(link to the recipe that I used- http://www.browneyedbaker.com/2012/06/07/mojito-cupcakes-recipe/)

I haven't tasted any of them yet so I'm not entirely sure how successful they were but they smelled delicious while they were baking. The frosting (which I may have ingested large quantities of) is pretty delicious so I have pretty high hopes.

The recipe only made a dozen cupcakes, after a brief council we decided to make an additional recipe of vanilla cupcakes just to be certain that there are enough to go around. Lori gave me a recipe to use and said that it only makes a few big cupcakes so I decided to make a bunch of tiny cupcakes instead. I don't know what size cupcakes she made but after I filled up two trays of tiny cupcakes I still had a lot of batter left. We rummaged through the cabinet to found the tiny donut pans and then proceeded to dump the remaining batter into them. The cupcakes and donuts came out super fluffy and tasty.

Then Sarah Leah came and wanted a cupcake, but there weren't enough. So she was sad. :(

-Written by Sarah Leah #guestpost 

As you can probably tell I don't really have anything to write about and I think I've pretty much exhausted the subject of cupcakes.  

Bye!! Have a great Weekend!  

Fuzzy Buzzy

Yesterday was a good day. I got to hang out with my sister, brother in law, and my nephew buzz.

Buzzy helped me study by pushing all sorts of buttons on my laptop. We shared some tiny hamburgers and I stuffed him full of chocolate tea biscuits. I would have gladly stayed at home to hang out for the remainder of the evening but I figured that I should probably go to class seeing as my test is next week.
Class was fun, the teacher split us up into groups of threes and fours and gave us math problems to solve. I was paired up with two other 'quiet' girls, the teacher was afraid to put us into different groups because she actually wanted us to learn something as opposed to sitting in shock and silence counting down the minutes until it was over. Her plan worked out rather nicely as we worked well together and accomplished a majority of the problems. The teacher walked by as we were nearing the end of the second page and was surprised to see how far we had gotten so I think we did better than the 'noisy' kids :P.
Class ends on the later side and I was pretty tired by the time I got home so I crawled into bed and went to sleep.

I spent a majority of my morning pretending to study and I started working on my sisters birthday present (her birthday is this weekend and everybody is coming here to celebrate).
I would love to write more but I have a test in an hour so bye for now.

Taking Over The University

Yesterday was fun. My friend and I, went to scout out the university that we'll be taking our test in next week. The plan was to do a practice test in the classroom that we'll be testing in next week.
Things went more or less according to plan, we found the classrooms without to much trouble and after a nice worker showed us how to turn on the lights and AC we sat down to take the test.
Em has taken the test before so she knows more or less what to expect. She generously offered to simulate some scenarios that could occur during the real test, such as sneezing, squeaking the chairs, opening and closing the door multiple times, stamping her feet, and even standing on the platform at the front of the room pretending to be the tester scrutinizing my every move (just to clarify, these simulations were while I was taking my test). I'll admit that some of the scenarios seemed a little extreme but hey, you never know what weirdos you'll get stuck taking the test with and its always better to be prepared.
After we finished the test we wandered around the building until we found the exit that leads to the buses and caught a number 4 to the center of jerusalem. We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around town and then explored the shuk in search of food for dinner. After we'd eaten we walked to the end of yafo and then parted ways.
My bus came pretty quickly and thanks to the lack of traffic I made it home in record time.

My sister is coming to visit today along with her hubby and my nephew, so today should be fun.
You guys can hear all about it tomorrow. :P
I have class later so I should probably go get some studying in before they get here....

Impromptu Babysitting

I spent most of the morning attempting to study. I say attempting because today it's really not my fault that I can't concentrate. The plumber showed up at around 9:30 and has been steadily making noise while ripping out assorted parts of the bathroom since then. Additionally, my sisters babysitter was unable to watch my niece today so we've had the pleasure of entertaining her.

I've been hiding in my room desperately trying to convince myself that math is just as fun as playing with my niece for the last 3 hours. Personally, i'm not buying it. 

I figured I may as well try and go over some of the material since i'm stuck in my tower anyway. 

While I was going over one of the subjects, the theme of the questions really jumped out at me. Here is a rough translation of a couple of them(my course is all in hebrew..):

Robert the bartender is experimenting with new drinks. If he mixes 9 liters of tequila at 20% concentration with 1 liter of rum at 70% concentration, what will the concentration of Roberts new drink be? 

The average percentage of alcohol in a cocktail made of vodka, rum and gin is 26%. If the percentage of alcohol in the vodka is 50%, what is the average percentage of alcohol in the gin and rum?

If you ever thought to yourself back in high-school "what's the point of learning all this math? when am I going to use this stuff in real life?" then here is your answer. These real life scenarios can be easily applied to many situations. I would like to take a moment to thank my course for choosing situations that the majority of the students can really relate to, and for giving me tools that I can use out there in the real world. Should the occasion arise where I must determine the percentage of alcohol in a cocktail, I'll be fully prepared. Then again I could always just drink the cocktail and find out that way, granted its not quiet as accurate as the other method but I think i'm okay with that. 

It's getting late and I have a practice test in an hour and a half so I suppose it's safe to stop 'studying' now. I'm gonna go find some ice cream to eat because I think that I earned it, 'studying' is hard work. 

I guess this is bye for now.

Hello World.

Once upon a time I had a blog. It was a good blog, it took me through my awkward teenage years. But then i got older, life got in the way and we grew apart.
I'm currently taking a course for the most annoying test known to man (ok that might be a bit of an overstatement but it is a pretty annoying test..) the psycometri. It's sort of the israeli version of the SAT's but worse.
Incidentally the first section of the test is writing an essay, which I am not very good at. Last night I was tossing and turning when the strangest idea occurred to me. "I should start another blog" (I say another because I have started many in the past, each time with the full intent to actually post things but then other things would come up and it would fall by the wayside alone and forgotten). My thought process was that if I  started blogging again it might improve my writing skills and I'd have a shot at writing that damn essay.
So here goes something...

Procrastinator extraordinaire:

I haven't been outside of this city in the last two weeks. I hardly even leave my house, save for the occasional stroll with my loyal canine friend and going to class. Other than that I pretend to study. I've become quite proficient at it (the pretending part that is..), it's amazing how incredibly important the most mundane things seem when the alternative is studying. I often find myself wondering about things such as, how that window ledge managed to accumulate so much dust and that I really ought to do something about it.

The rational side of my brain tells me to "pull it together!" *mentally slap myself across the face* "just stop procrastinating and study for a bit, it won't take long and I'll feel so much more accomplished when I show up for class with my work done". But alas I am weak and easily overcome by temptations (not to say that I actually clean anything, that would require work and I'm awfully lazy), and so I wander off instead in search .of sustenance

As I sit on the kitchen floor indulging my inner fat child in mint chocolate chip ice cream I begin to think over past events. The guilt begins to set in and as I desperately attempt to ward it off with delicious confections the sicker I begin to feel (partially due to the obscene amounts of sugar that I hastily ingested). At last I reach my senses and put away the ice cream and other assorted things that I somehow thought it would be a good idea to eat. I walk up the stairs to my tower with a new sense of purpose fully intending to spend the next hour or so deep in my studies. I sit down at my desk and take a deep breath while gazing out the window. But then, I can't help but notice out of the corner of my eye that those plants look awfully thirsty. Someone really ought to do something about that….