Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Hannah's Piano and Violin Recital


In September, I had a music recital. I played two pieces on the piano and one long piece on the violin. My first piece that I played was called Sweet Dreams and composed by Tchaikovsky. This piece is pretty slow and is beautiful. Tchaikovsky is a Russian composer born on May 7, 1840. He is considered the most popular Russian composer in history. The style that he did was called Romance, and he wrote many beautiful melodies on different instruments including piano. His most famous works were Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker.    Tchaikovsky died at the age of 53. My next piece that I played was called Sonata by Mozart. Mozart was born in Vienna on January 27, 1756, in Austria, Vienna. He was a composer of the Classical Era, and he created many operas, concerts, symphonies, and sonatas. He died at the age of 35.






For violin, I played Concerto No. 1 by Accolay. It was a very long piece and hard to learn by heart, so I had to practice a lot of hours. Accolay was a Belgian composer who composed during the romantic period. He is best known for his student concerto in A minor written for the violin and an orchestra. He was also a violin teacher, and violinist. This piece was so long that I got a little bit nervous and forgot what I was playing but I quickly relaxed and finished playing the piece. I hope you enjoy listening! 








Saturday, November 28, 2015

Guest Post by Hannah: Thanksgiving Dinner

helping prepare dinner
Every year, we have a Thanksgiving party at our house with grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews, and nieces. Thanksgiving is a time to be thankful. I am thankful for my wonder family and the food that we have. For thanksgiving we had turkey, special yellow rice, stuffing, and salads. For dessert we had banana bread and pumpkin bread. My siblings and I each got to help out by baking something. We decided to have a contest where we tallied who liked which cake better.  My sister Miriam and my brother Michael both baked pumpkin bread and my other sister Sarah and I baked banana bread. More of our family liked the banana bread, so Sarah and I ended up winning, but it was a close vote because everyone liked both cakes.



My sister cooking the stuffing

my dad hanging the turkey
My cousins

all the guests

My great aunt and cousin

Add caption








cleaning up

After eating and playing with everyone, it was time to clean up and say goodbye. I can't wait for next year!

How did you celebrate Thanksgiving?












Hello

Sunday, October 25, 2015

Putting it all Together

Puzzle #1
Puzzle #2
Over the past couple of months, I have been working on completing multiple puzzles. The first puzzle I attempted was a 500 piece puzzle of a lake with swans swimming around, and beautiful houses in the back-round, with fireworks. When doing any puzzle, you start by doing the edges, which are the outer border of the puzzle. After that is done, you start doing the inside, by picking any small object in the picture to start with. You continue doing that, until you put the final pieces of the puzzle together. After completing the 500 piece puzzle, I decided to challenge myself by trying a 1000 piece puzzle. This is a gorgeous puzzle that describes a snowy winter night in the forest with the aurora lights in the sky. Gray wolves are seen lurking around and howling in the background.


After finishing a puzzle, I glue it onto a piece of card board, and put it up on my counter. This is a multiple step process starting with flipping over the puzzle onto the back side. To do this, we sandwiched the puzzle by two card board papers, and quickly and carefully, flipped it over. After that was done, we spread glue all over the puzzle, and left it to dry for about two hours. When we came back, the puzzle was completely stuck together, so none of it fell apart when we picked it up. Finally, we cut the card board to fit the size of the puzzle, and glued it on.  Puzzles are one of my favorite hobbies, and I hope to attempt another beautiful image soon! 





All the pieces are stuck together













Almost done!




What is  your favorite hobby? 
Have you ever tried to complete a puzzle?

Sunday, August 30, 2015

Lahaina



One of our favorite evening activities was going to Front Street, in the city of Lahaina. It is a historic town that now has numerous art galleries, shops, and restaurants. It was the capital city from 1820 to 1845 when King Kanehaneha ruled. The capital was later moved to Honolulu. We came at around 7:00 pm so we can watch the sunset. When the sun was almost down, all the people lined the street along the ocean to watch the sunset. Each second, the sun goes lower and lower until it disappears. When the sun is down, the sky is filled with beautiful colors, such as red, orange, pink, and yellow.


































After watching the sunset, we headed toward one of our favorite spots to climb, the very old and famous banyan tree.  It is a 137 year old tree that was planted in 1873. It was a huge tree, with numerous roots and branches for us to climb. We swung from branch to branch, and climbed around until we were ready to go and visit the galleries.  Every Friday evening, the artists that have their paintings and photos showcased in the galleries, come out to to answer questions, and explain their work. We chatted with some of the photographers, and were surprised to find out that they sometimes had to wait years and years, until they finally got the perfect photo. The paintings and photos were beautiful, and we enjoyed learning about their work and getting to know them. After walking around for a while, we all were hungry and went out for dinner. The restaurant had a view of the ocean, and there was live music playing while we ate.






My friend showing me her awesome drawing
While in Maui, we met a girl named Florenel at the beach one day, and we all played with her while my parents talked with her parents. She is from Montreal, and stayed in the condo complex near us and was able to came over to play with us. She speaks Russian, English, and French fluently, and is learning Spanish. She also draws really well, and drew pieces from chess, a butterfly, a race car, and dolphins in the ocean for my siblings and I to keep to remember her. One evening she came to Lahaina with us, and we all spent time together looking around at the galleries, going out for dinner, and watching the gorgeous sunset.




Eating dinner with friends

We will miss her and her family and promised to keep in touch. Hopefully one day soon we will be able to meet again either in Montreal or in Los Angeles.

A beautiful rainbow taken from the car as we left Lahaina

Saturday, August 22, 2015

Guest Post by Hannah: Road Trip To Hana

Recently, while we were vacationing in Maui, my family and I went to Hana. Since we liked it so much we made the drive twice to make sure we had an opportunity to see everything. Hana is a tropical rainforest, and a beautiful city. We woke up extra early so we can pack everything such as water shoes, towels, food, and water, as we were in Hana for the whole day. After, we all were packed and ready to leave my mom took this CD about Hana. We took a CD on the way that showed the directions and about the different waterfalls and trails. As we were driving, we looked out of the window and saw the beautiful scenery.


crossed a lot of shaky bridges
 Our first stop was a very muddy and steep trail that would lead us to three different waterfalls. We first had to put on water shoes because it started raining.  As we were hiking, we had to cross a river, and hike through mud, until we got to the first waterfall. The second waterfall was even more difficult to reach because we had to hold on to a rope while climbing up the rocks. My sister, Sarah, helped me and my brother get up to the top. After that, we finally saw the gorgeous waterfall. The waterfall dropped into this big pool that we swam in. The water was cold, but refreshing after the long hike.The first time we made this trip, we only were able to reach the first two waterfalls.  However on our second trip to Hana, we hiked to the third waterfall as well. The third waterfall was much harder than the other two because we had to climb a ladder, climb rocks and swim about 100 meters through a river to reach the third waterfall. This third waterfall was the largest of all of them and we felt really proud that we made it. As we started hiking back to the car, we kept on getting our shoes muddy so whenever we saw a pool of water, we washed them.


Waterfall #1





















climbing up to waterfall #2




Finally, as we safely arrived back we started driving to the next trail. We stopped for lunch at this place that had benches and we ate lunch there.
Eating lunch and enjoying the view


 After lunch our next stop was Black Sand Beach and then Red Sand Beach. Black Sand beach has black sand and huge waves which made it dangerous to swim far out. Red Sand beach was difficult to reach because we had to hike on a steep path that lead to a beach with beautiful red color sand. Unfortunately, there was a really strong current that pulled you out toward the rocks, so we also couldn't swim at this beach.
Black sand beach
Huge waves at black sand beach
Red sand beach


Enjoying the tropical fruits in Hana

Our next stop was the Venus pools. The first time we drove to Hana, we couldn't find the Venus pool, but we are really glad that we found it the second time because it was a beautiful pool of water near the beach. As we arrived we had to hike down a little path and suddenly you see a huge pool of bright blue water. The pool is a mix of salt water from the ocean and freshwater from the waterfalls. The pool was very deep, and we saw people jumping off the high rocks above the pool. Sarah, Michael, and I also jumped off the cliffs into the warm water. 



Here is a short video of Sarah and Michael jumping off the cliff.


Our final stop was the seven pools. There are actually 24 pools in that area but the place is called seven pools probably because it sounds better that way. We had to hike half a mile to reach the pools.  This area was very windy and the water was much colder than the Venus because the seven pool has freshwater. Here, we also swam and jumped off the rocks before leaving for home.  As we got to our car we looked at the time and it was already seven o'clock so we started the two hour drive back to our condo. This was a full day trip, as we left at 8 o'clock and got home after 9 pm. This was definitely my favorite place we have been to in Maui.