Goodbye blogging...

Blogging this year has been quite the journey. When I first heard that we were going to be blogging, lets just I was slightly less than ecstatic. I mean who wants to write about their life and then post it on the internet for everyone to read. A lot has happened since I first started blogging: I build a cardboard boat, I broke my phone so badly that you couldn't see anything on it, I took my first AP test, I went trapezing, I rebroke my phone, but this time somehow managed to fix it and I wrote a blog. Let's start at the beginning and talk about the evolution of my blog.

The first problem that I faced with blogging was what to write about. After going back and forth about what to write about, I finally settled on cross-country skiing. My second problem was how often we needed to post to our blogs. I was pretty confident that my life was nowhere near interesting enough to write about something different every week. When I chose cross-country skiing, I thought it would actually be pretty easy to write about because I came home everyday with a different story to tell someone. I soon realized that I couldn't write about all of my stories (you can't really have a blog about the latest ski team gossip).

Later in the year I started to figure out what I wanted to write about. I began to write more and more about the interesting things that happened to me. Even though, I wrote about some things that were not ski related (i.e. engineering & geoguesser), I was proud that I was able to stick to my theme most of the time. I learned a lot about blogging and just writing in general. 

I can honestly say now that I have had a great year blogging. My favorite part (sadly) was actually blog stalking kids in our grade and a few kids on my ski team (yes, I found a few seniors on my ski team's 9th blog, I was very dedicated). I am aware that it sounds very creepy, but I was just very curious as to what other people were writing about. I follow a lot of blogs and I feel like I have gotten to know a lot of people through their blogs. I hope that people have gotten to know me a little better after reading my blog. 

I have learned a lot about writing as well. I've learned how to write a narrative story that is (hopefully) entertaining to others. When I go back and read my first posts, I can see how much I've improved. My first posts were short (word wise), but felt like they were going on and on forever. I feel like my posts now are longer (word wise), but also more captivating. I am excited to look back (and cringe) on this blog in three years when I am a senior to see how I have changed. 

Today, I feel like I am a better writer and I honestly enjoyed blogging. Thanks for reading my blog. Oh and yes this will probably be my last post on this blog, but who knows I might get motivated and decide to start again. 

Goodbye for now... Photo courtesy of Julie Shipman
(From left to right: Rachael, Lucie, Josie, Aysia, Me, The other Claire)

- Claire 

The Off Ski Season (aka My TV Watching Season)

This month has been our off month for cross-country skiing. Over the course of the past month I have done very little physical activity. I went on a few short "runs", if you could even call them that. They were more like walks with sprinkles of running thrown in there.

I have spent my off month doing basically two things. Studying and watching TV. I am currently taking AP geography and the AP test is rapidly approaching. Even though I am well aware that I should be studying for that, I have been spending most of my time watching TV. I know this blog is supposed to be about cross-country skiing, but oh well. This is how I've been wasting time lately in the absence of skiing.

Monday: SCORPION! Scorpion is a show about a group of geniuses who work for homeland security and solve crimes. The team consists of Walter, Toby, Happy, Sylvester, Paige and Cabe. Everyone has their own special talents (i.e. programming, math, behavior analysis, etc.) that they add to the team. This show is so intelligent and incredibly entertaining to watch.

Team Scorpion!! (credits)

Tuesday: Pretty Little Liars and Shadowhunters. Pretty Little Liars is a very complicated TV show about four girls who are being stalked by "A". Shadowhunters is based on the Mortal Instruments series. For those of you who don't know it is about a girl, Clary Fray, who realizes that she is a shadowhunter (part human, part angel). She gets sucked into the "shadow world", which is the hidden world where vampires, werewolves and demons exist.

Pretty Little Liars (credit)

Wednesday: Survivor. Survivor is a reality TV show where contestants compete for a million dollars and the group votes one person off each week. It is a mental, physical and social game where they compete in challenges for rewards (food) and immunity (they can't get voted off).

Thursday: Grey's Anatomy and How to Get Away with Murder. I already wrote a blog post about this two shows, so I won't go into too much detail describing them. However, they are both incredibly good and I highly recommend watching them (just make sure you don't have anything to do because it will take up all of your time).

Friday: The Amazing Race. The Amazing Race is a reality TV show where teams of two race around the world competing in challenges for a million dollars.

Saturday: Netflix shows: Psych and House M.D.  Psych is a comedy show about a fake physic detective who solves crimes for the SBPD. The show is remarkably funny and I laugh watching every episode. House M.D. is a show about a doctor who only takes on extreme cases and solves them by treating them, instead of running labs. House will make you really frustrated at first (like who just treats someone for a disease they might not have?), but you will grow to love his (extremely sarcastic) sense of humor.

The pose is actually pretty cool in the show (credit)

Sunday: Quantico. Quantico is a TV about a group of FBI agents attempting to figure out who the terrorist is. Plot twist: the terrorist is working from within the FBI. The main character, Alex, has to race to find out who the terrorist is before they kill her friends.

So, those are my recommendations. I have more, but this blog post would be way too long if I talked about all of them. Thanks for listening to me ramble on and on about my favorite TV shows.

- Claire

I'm Joining the Circus

Ok not really, but I'm pretty sure some of my friends were seriously considering it after our first trapeze class.

A few of my friends, Josie, Rachael, Lucie, Aysia, Claire and I decided to go trapezing a few weeks ago. Yes that's right trapezing, like full on circus act trapezing. Josie's mom went to a class a few months ago and said that it was really fun. Josie brought up the idea a few weeks ago and we all wanted to go. Everyone was so excited because how many chances are you going to get to pretend you're in the circus?

For those of you who don't know what trapezing is... (photo credits)

We all met up and headed down to the trapeze place. We got to the class and it turns out we were the only ones there (yay private lesson!) . We went through training at the beginning of the class. It was fairly simple stuff, like how to jump off, how to hang from the bar, how to dismount. Well, it seemed simple at the time (before I was forty feet off the ground). 

Since, Josie's mom had done this before, she went first. She climbed up the forty foot ladder and trapezed. She made it look easy enough. 

I went next and honestly the scariest part was climbing the ladder. Note to self: don't say that the ladder is shaking because the instructors WILL come and shake the ladder even more. I made it up to the platform and then the guy swung the bar over to me. All I had to was grab it with my right hand, while holding onto the platform with my left hand. The guy was holding onto my harness, so I didn't fall. Anyways, I grabbed on to the bar with my other hand and jumped off the platform. 

There was another guy at the bottom yelling commands to you like "legs up, hands off, hands on, legs off, forwards, backwards, forwards, let go".  I would say my first attempt was moderately successful. I mean other than when I face planted because I tried to land on my feet (apparently you are supposed to try and land on your butt or back, I was not aware of this).  

Everyone else went and we all got to go a few more times before we learned how to do a "catch". A catch is when you hang upside down and the other person (the instructor) catches you. I was slightly terrified that I either wouldn't let go or I would jump at the wrong time or the guy would drop me. But none of that happened. It actually went pretty well. I let go and the guy caught me. End of story. It just wasn't incredibly graceful or as cool looking as the picture above. 

Anyways, I would highly recommend going trapezing at least once in your life. It was so much fun (once you got over the initial fear of dying) and I would totally go again! This was honestly one of my favorite activities that I've done with my friends and the instructors were really nice and funny. My favorite quote of the night was "Trapezing is a lot like dating, just keep your legs together and everything will be just fine".

I went trapezing!!! (video courtesy of moi)

- Claire 

Shondaland

Some of you may know the name "Shonda Rhimes", while others may not. Anyone who watches Grey's Anatomy, How to Get Away with Murder, Scandal or the Catch, knows who I'm talking about. Shonda Rhimes is the woman who continues to mess with my life every single Thursday (yes, I'm aware that I'm over exaggerating, but just go with it). Let me back up for a second. She is the writer of several hit shows on ABC.  Every single Thursday is Shonda's night and I watch her shows no matter how many times I say "I swear I'm never watching this again".

I only watch two of her shows, Grey's Anatomy (GA) and How to Get Away with Murder (HTGAWM). Grey's Anatomy is a show following a group of surgical interns, residents and attendings and is doing pretty well considering it's on its 12th season. HTGAWM is a show following a group of law students and their professor, which is only on the second season but has had more plot twists than I've ever seen in my entire life.

I first started watching GA with a few of my friends last summer and finished the first eleven seasons on netflix in a few weeks. This show will frustrate you in so many ways. First off, they will kill almost every character you like (spoiler alert: they all die) or have them leave the show in some other way. Secondly, they will ruin all of your favorite ships. You have probably been in love with Japril or Merder or Calzona for at least one period of time. Oh well, they will probably have some incredibly tragic breakup that will honestly make you scream and then hope and pray they get back together (which, sadly probably won't happen).

I feel you (photo credit: someecards.com)

Somehow they manage bring in new characters who you hate (like with a burning passion) and then a season later you love them. This will also happen with your least favorite (now favorite) ships. When the show first started I loved Cristina and Burke, then Cristina and Owen and now I'm team Owen and Amelia. Sometimes I just don't understand how I can hate a character so much and then love them a month later. So props to you Shonda. I feel like I should also mention that the show isn't just rage inducing. The show is also incredibly funny, has some great quotes and trust me you''ll get used to watching all the surgeries (check out my friend Claire's blog post about it).

Grey's Anatomy (photo courtesy of Yahoo TV)

The next show is How to Get Away with Murder (HTGAWM). This one is substantially more messed up than Grey's Anatomy. The show is about five law students who get chosen to do an internship with their teacher, Annalise Keating. Each season has one main case that they are trying to solve and each episode has another little case. As you could probably (actually probably not) guess, some of the interns are involved in these cases (like involved as in committed a crime). The show will keep you guessing who did for the entire season and you will be completely and utterly shocked when you find out who it was. However, everything will also come together and make perfect sense. I honestly don't know how she can keep track of these plot lines, they are so confusing sometimes.

How to get away with murder (credits)

I watched all of season 1 over the course of 24 hours. I had ski training the next morning and had to leave with 15 minutes left in the season finale. Let's just say I don't recommend doing that (talk about a cliff hanger).

I have yelled, screamed, cried, and laughed hysterically watching all Shonda Rhimes productions. If you don't feel like getting emotionally attached to every character, I would not recommend watching Grey's Anatomy or How to Get Away with Murder. However, you should watch them because they are really good and they will take you on a crazy emotional roller coaster.

Accurate representation of my life (photo credit: someecards.com)

- Claire 

Canada Part 2

After the race, we waited around for awards and the raffle. A few of the kids on Sun Valley got awards for the race and everyone got a prize from the raffle. That is everyone except for me. That was a bummer, but oh well.

Skiing at Shark Mountain (Photo courtesy of Morgan Smyth) 

The next day, we went on a ski at Shark Mountain, which was the back up site for the 1988 olympics. It was a fun ski, even though it was a little more like a photo shoot than a ski. We skied 10-15k and then we stopped and took photos for awhile.

Later that day, the Sun Valley coach, Mikey, found out where/when the world cup athletes were training, so we went and watched them ski. Which was borderline creepy, but also pretty cool.

Later that night at dinner, one of the kids, Keene, decided that we should all go around the room and say one nice thing about every single person in the room. He started the "game".  He went around giving strange "compliments" like "I like the way you can wear twelve layers and make it look like two". He gets to me and goes "You... you there... yeah you...", which prompted me to respond "Do you know my name?". At that point he just started randomly guessing names, which is really funny considering there were only two people on this trip who he didn't already know. Let's just say my name became Sofia for the rest of the trip.

The next day we watched the world cup sprints. It was pretty cool to get to see everyone race and Morgan (our coach) and Mikey used to race world cup, we got to meet a lot of the US skiers. We went and cheered decked out in USA gear with our posters. One of the USA girls, Jessie Diggins, got 6th in the sprint, which was awesome to watch.

Go USA!! (Photo courtesy of Morgan Smyth)

After the races, we got to ski the world cup course. The courses were a lot harder than they looked, the hills, turns, and corners were substantially more difficult than I thought they would be.

The next day we watched the races again. The second day was a skiathalon, meaning they start out classic skiing and then switch to skate. Mikey had checked out the course the day before, so he knew where the best points to watch were going to be. We would watch at point, cheer and then sprint to the next location and we repeated this process about 10 times.

After the races, we went to the awards ceremony. We made a tunnel for the winners to walk through and we actually got to meet some of them. Karsten, Anja and I got a picture with the winner from the race and the bronze medalist from the Sochi olympics, Martin Sundby from Norway.

Me, Karsten, Sundby, Anja 

The next day we went home after a long, but fun trip.

- Claire

Canada Part 1

Last week, I went to Canada with my cross-country ski team. Well, it was really just two of us and one of our coaches. We went to Canada to do a 20k race and then watch some of the world cup race for cross-country skiing.

We left early on Saturday morning on our first flight to LAX (yes, I'm aware that LA was out of our way) Once we arrived in LA, we proceeded to switch terminals, get stuck in traffic, go through security AGAIN and make it to our flight just before boarding, even though we had a two hour layover.

After another short flight to Calgary, we rented a car. On the plane we had somehow decided that I would be the navigator, even though I'm really really bad at directions. Our coach had printed out directions and the first step was to leave the airport on "Airport Trail NE". We ended up leaving the airport on "Airport Trail S" (which I noticed), but everyone said that we would connect, so I just went with it.

Long story short, we drove around Calgary for an hour looking for the wrong road and I was banned from ever being "the directions person" again.

We ended up getting to our hotel (which I found) around 9:00. The problem was we couldn't get into our rooms until the other team from Idaho (Sun Valley) arrived because we were staying with them. We waited around for 30 or so minutes until they got to the hotel.

They got there, we got our room assignments, and then ate dinner. That was when I met all of the Sun Valley kids. I thought there were a lot of them on that trip, apparently it was only a small fraction of their team. There were four girls: Anja, Katherine, Ellie and Lonnie. I shared a bedroom with Anja, Katharine slept on the pullout couch and we all had a connecting room with Ellie and Lonnie. There were seven guys: Max, Cash, Liam, Trux (pronounced trucks and it was a nickname), Tim, Danny and Keene.

The next day was the race. It was 45 minutes away from our hotel, so we left pretty early. We got there and as my coach said it was -3 out. Naturally, I kind of, sort of, maybe freaked out a little (ok, a lot) because I didn't bring that many layers. Turns out it was actually -3 celsius, so around 27 degrees fahrenheit. It was also snowing quite hard. To say the least, I was not looking forward to doing a 20k race in a blizzard.

We got out of the nice, warm car and started skiing around before the race. About ten minutes before the race I ran off to go find a bathroom and left Karsten with my skis. I got back and he had two skis in his hand was walking over to the start. I took the other two skis and headed over. We started the race on these tiny little trails and I noticed that I didn't have good kick on one of my skis. I ignored it and kept skiing. The race was hard and I'm pretty sure I've blocked the rest of it out. I finished the race and then saw Karsten. Who promptly asked me "Do you have one of my skis?". That was when it all clicked. He had accidentally taken one of my skis before the race, which was why I didn't have any kick on one ski.

Race Day!!! Standing from left to right: Danny, Trux, Tim, Max, Keene, Liam, Katharine, Lonnie, Anja, Karsten... Kneeling from left to right: Cash, Ellie, Mikey (The Sun Valley Coach), and me... Photo courtesy of Morgan Smyth  

That's all for now...

Check back soon for a part 2!!

- Claire

"The thing"

*** This actually happened a few months ago, but I never posted it and just found it again the other day

The other day several kids on my team decided to create "the thing". There were only a select few who had the privilege of knowing what "the thing" was. It was created at training one day when our team was divided into two groups on a run. One group ran slightly faster and the other slightly slower. The faster group, who I will refer to as "Group A" came up with the thing and quite sadly I was a member of "Group B". I did not get the luxury of knowing what this so-called thing was.

I learned about the thing at the next practice, which was weights. One of the girls in group b (my group) came running up to me yelling what's the thing and I was sitting there like what thing? She told me that there was some thing and no one would tell her what it was. Of course I didn't know what it was either, so I went up to Victoria and was like do you know what the thing is? And she responded "No, but I just heard about it" So we went around and asked everyone what it was. Every one in Group B had no clue what it was, and everyone in Group A wouldn't crack. Victoria and I decided that we needed to get them alone. So, we went to the person we thought would be most likely to crack. We cornered him and demanded an answer. He still wouldn't tell us.

We spent all of the next day at school going mad trying to figure out what the thing was. We were coming up with all of these theories. We started questioning whether it was actually anything? Maybe it was nothing that they just called "the thing" to mess with us. Then we thought this was some kind of hazing, but we then realized that some of the seniors were in Group B, so it couldn't be targeted just at the freshmen. We went absolutely crazy that was all we talked about for hours. We probably spent 5 hours trying to figure it out. Big shocker we couldn't figure it out. So, the next day at training we asked everyone again. Still no response. I was so frustrated, my mind was entirely occupied by "the thing", I thought of nothing else.

The day after that we asked one of the seniors "What is the thing, we been going crazy trying to figure it out" she told us the thing and we both sat there like really that's it. The thing was that Group A was messing with a senior in Group B who puts check marks next to each workout she has done. They would add check marks and erase check marks to mess with her. In the end it turned out not to be a big deal to us that is (the senior freaked out a little)  So moral of the story, if you have a secret "thing" and two people are dying to know what it is and it isn't about them, just tell them. And if you are a victim of "the thing" it probably doesn't concern you, so don't go crazy.

Every single time she does a weight workout... Photo credits