Florida!

In my lifetime so far, I've been to Florida about six times. This summer will be seven! The last time I went was when I was in sixth grade. My grandparents and aunt were going and they invited me to go. I found this amazing because I was able to go to Florida, while my siblings had to go to school. The downside was that I had to make up the work. I also had to stay after one day on the weekend to make up testing, that they were going to be doing while I was gone. At that point, it honestly didn't even matter. Like I've said in one of my previous essays, I love roller coasters and rides. Disney World was just the place for me.

When we got up there, we met up with some of my other aunts and uncles and we all went back to the resort. We stayed about 15 minutes away from Disney World so they took me everyday. We stayed right on the water as well so I could just go swimming whenever I felt like it, which was a plus. Everyday we would take a ferry which would bring us to Disney.

I was finally tall enough to ride all of the roller coasters and rides! Since it wasn't on an actual vacation week from school, luckily, it wasn't crowded. All the other years, I wasn't able to go on all the rides that my older brother and dad went on because I wasn't tall enough. Now I finally was! Of course, the first rides I went on were those.

The first ride was Aerosmith, the one with the huge guitar one the outside. It started out with the band being late and their manager is trying to get them on the road. I remember being so excited about being able to go on it, I wasn't even really paying attention. What caught my attention was being shot out from zero mph to 60 mph in 2.8 seconds! Since I wasn't ready all I could do was scream! It was a good kind of scream though.

The next ride, The Tower of Terror. Just the name in general kind of frightened me a bit. This hadn't stopped me. As I got closer and closer to the beginning of the line, I felt my heart pumping faster and faster. The video before I went into the elevator was a story about the "Twilight Zone." When I got on the elevator my seatbelt was extremely loose, this I felt made it a million times more scary! On the first drop it felt like I was about to fly out of my seat. The seatbelt wasn't even serving its purpose because I was flying everywhere. After the ride was over surprisingly, even after that, I still wanted to go on again. The next times that I went on weren't as bad because I was actually strapped in correctly. The ride consisted of freefall, and dazzling effects.

Next, we did something that wasn't on a track! We did Davy Crockett's Explorer Canoes. This was very interesting and fun but also tiring. It was an oar powered ride around Tom Sawyer's Island. You had to propel the craft around the island and past the Cascade Peak. We were helped by two explorer scouts. I learned the hard way, if you go on this, don't sit behind a little kid. You'll get soaked!
Every single night after spending the majority of the day in Disney World, we'd watch the fireworks. It was like a front row seat for us because we weren't far from where the fireworks were being set off. We would watch the fire works from Epcot. In Epcot we also saw the Future World and World Showcase. In the Future World we saw the past and future of technology advancements. In World Showcase, it highlighted the art, architecture, and culture of the countries surrounding the Lagoon. Epcot's landscape is watery, grassy slopes, and many trees.

In Magic Kingdom as a kid, my favorite ride was "It's a small world." I liked the catchy melody and the boat ride. It glided through the various dolls that were singing and dancing to bring the world's cultures closer. My favorite ride there today is probably either Space Mountain or Splash Mountain. For Space Mountain I just remember all of these flashing lights we go past as we swerved through the galaxy. For Splash Mountain this was fun because we went from going through caves and watery byways in a log boat. As this was going on, we were listening to characters singing songs from a Disney film. It had about a 50ft drop too which was exciting.

We also went through the Haunted Mansion. This was a spooky tour of an ominous haunted house. The ghost introduced us to his "closest 999 dearly-departed friends."As you walk through different parts of the house I remember walking into the ghostly portrait chamber where the room got colder, and you just got that spooky sense. Right after that is when I realized there were no doors or windows. After passing through, we board a "Doom Buggy" and the ghost took us through several dusty rooms. At the end of the tour, three ghosts volunteer to follow you home.

I would have loved to go to Blizzard Beach or Typhoon Lagoon! We unfortunately just ran out of time. We are going back this summer so hopefully we'll go there!
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Example Conclusion

Drug addiction is responsible for much of today's crime. Jim Morrison, one of the most charismatic and influential frontmen in rock music said "Drugs are a bet with your mind." The mind is where all kinds of things take place. When doing drugs, you're mind is affected because you are allowing yourself to get addicted to being "high." While this is going on, you have no control because you can't use your regular judgement that you have when you're drug-free. Doing drugs makes you think you have nothing to lose. Some of the decisions you make may be leading you to do something that would normally be out of your comfort zone. Maybe people prefer to think this way because it allows the conscience to make the decision with less persuasion, and it's easier to just give up, or to give in. The mind actually believes there's much to gain with the drug of choice. In the end you wasted your time, money, and dignity. The odds are against you, and if you place a bet with your mind you'll lose.

Girls have to spend way more time than boys getting ready in the morning.

• Girls put on makeup to look more "attractive" and "mature."
• Hair takes longer to do because girls have longer hair. 
• Outfits are hard to choose because you have so many choices. 

Off to Spain!

When I was twelve, I went on vacation with my littlest sister, dad, and mom. My other two siblings stayed home with my grandparents. My littlest sister was about two, so she doesn't remember anything. For me, this was by far the best vacation I've ever been on! The reason why we went on this trip was because my dad had a business trip. We thought it'd be fun to go with him. Luckily, thanks to my dad, we all knew how to speak Spanish.
The plane was probably the worst part because the person in back of me was a five year old boy. All throughout the plane ride there, he kicked my seat. It was really annoying. I wasn't able to go to sleep at all in the 11 hour plane ride. When I got there, it was totally worth it!
I remember getting off the airplane thinking it was a certain time, then it wasn't. Spain is six hours ahead of the US, this took a while to get used to. In the airport the first thing we noticed is that everyone talked super fast. At times, this made it hard to understand. They pronounce some words differently which didn't help either. After we had gone through all of the security gates, we were looking for my dad's friend. I thought this was going to be impossible to find him, considering that we had never seen him before. We had gone down the escalator, then I spotted some guy jumping up and down with a huge poster with our names on it. I would have never thought of doing this, but it was a good way to get our attention. It was safe to assume that it was him. My dad's friend was Javier and his wife was Paloma.
After we introduced ourselves, he drove us to his house. They had a huge house and invited us to stay. From the window of his house, you could see where the princess lived. Although we never got to see her, I still thought it was really cool! It was only about 300 feet from the house we stayed.
The first day, I woke up at 1pm! Half the day was already gone! It took me about three days to actually get used to the time difference. Every day, everyone went to work. This left my mom, my sister, and I to just wander. We got lost a lot, but that's what made it interesting. Every day my mom would bring me to this desert and icy shop. I'd always get a lemon slush. Unfortunately, they don't make it anywhere around here.
The second day, we went to a famous art gallery called Museo del Prado. The Prado is one of the largest art collections int he world. It is best known for its diverse assortment of works by Velasquez, Goya, and El Greco. As a kid, I found this the most boring thing. I didn't understand why my mother put me through this torture. I remember seeing the painting of the naked lady. I wondered how that was artwork, and why they put it up in public. I was scarred for life at that point. The only thing that got me through it was that my mom said we could go to the amusement park after. I'd do just about anything to go to amusement parks. I have loved roller coasters ever since i was little. The amusement parks there I now know aren't as good as Six Flags, but as a kid it didn't even make a difference.
The next day we went with everyone on a bus tour. This took us all around Madrid. It showed us all of the top ten sights to see. The sights we saw were the Royal Palace, Puerta del Sol, Plaza Mayor, Templo de Debod, Madrid Cathedral, Plaza de la Villa, Puerta de Alcala, Gran Via, Plaza de Cibeles, and Plaza de Oriente. In the night some of these things looked even prettier because of all the lights.
What I found very different from here and there are the types of food. Here, there is a ton of junk food and fast food places. There, there's none that I saw. On almost every other street, there were a ton of stands that made food and sold it on the side of the road. I unfortunately am a very picky eater and chose to eat none of it. My mother and sister seemed to enjoy it though. Just about every single night, we'd eat at a different restaurant. At most restaurants I would just eat pasta. I am not the type of person that likes to try a lot of new foods. I like to eat the common, every day foods and that's about it. When we decided to eat at home Javier and Paloma would make similar things like in the restaurant. I chose to make pasta every night they made it. My dad usually made me try to eat their food, which I knew I wasn't going to like. This majority of the time this ended with me always  saying "Ew, I told you I wouldn't like it."My dad would then say, "If you don't try things you'll never get used to new things." At this point it honestly didn't matter to me, I was only twelve. All the foods he learned how to cook down there he still cooks every once in awhile. Since he has been having me eat a little every time, I guess I could say it has grown on me a little.
The next day my mom, sister, and I went on and underground railroad. I thought it was the weirdest thing because i have never seen one underground before. We took it to one of the streets by the center of town. We walked to one of Spain's historical parks and spent the day there. It was a very calm and soothing place. It was a peaceful urban park centered around a beautiful lake. The name of the park is Parque del Retiro.
The next day we drove to Toledo to see one of Spain's finest Gothic cathedrals. The cathedral that was had seen was Catedral Primada Santa Maria de Toledo. Right by the cathedral, was a church. The church was called Iglesia de Santo Tome. We went inside the church to see El Greco's most important painting, the Burial of Count Orgaz. After that, we went to Javier's mother's house. I thought Javier's house was huge, then I saw his mother's house. She has a different room for each one of her kids and grand kids just for when they visit. There had to be at least twenty rooms and ten or so bathrooms. It was ridiculous! They owned part of a farm so they also had a ton of land and animals. For dinner they offered to give me rabbit, goat, pig and a lot of other things. I wondered why they were giving me so many choices and why they were all the animals I saw on their farm. Right as I walked through the door, to go to the bathroom, then everything made sense. There was a picture of people who were holding up dead animals and a gun right next to it. That is when I realized they were hunters and they killed their animals they owned.
The last day we went to Segovia and we saw the aqueducts. I found this very interesting because I learned that there was a system of aqueducts and underground canals which once brought water from the mountains fifteen km away. The aqueduct was about 2950 feet long. The section where the arches are divided in two levels is about 900 feet. This was built by the Romans around 50a.d. and was designed to make water flow uphill. This surprisingly was just built by stacking large stones.
One of the things I personally would have enjoyed doing was seeing a bullfight. Madrid, where we stayed, was one of the dual epicenters of bullfighting in Spain. This seems really fun to watch and I would have loved to see it. It's basically a dance with death, one wrong move and the Matador could be dead. Javier also had a beach house in Casa del Sol that i never got to see. It would have been nice because I heard the beaches are really nice there. I also never got to go to the spot in Barcelona where they had the Olympics.
Since the day we left, my dad has been telling me that we are going to go back but we have yet to do so. Since then, Javier and Paloma now have two kids. Javier and Paloma asked if they could fly me there to teach their kids English. This would be really fun because I would get to do that and I would probably get to do the things I didn't get to do the first time. I get to fly out there this summer for a whole month if my grades are good. This has been my motivation this whole year and I hope I can keep them up so I can go!

Word Count: 1,456

Vacation in Vermont

Every winter since 2006, my whole family has gone to Vermont to stay at a resort called Smuggler's Notch. There you can either go snowboarding or skiing. We usually go around the weekof my birthday which is pretty cool. I get to spend it up on the mountain, with some of my friends that I met there. The first time we had gone, most of my family was on skis because it was our first time ever going. My dad and older brother were the only ones that had gone snowboarding because they had a couple years of experience.


 For those of us that were skiing, we picked it up pretty quickly, and had began going on more difficult runs every time. Usually my dad and brother would snowboard together, and everybody else would ski together. At lunch our whole family would meet up at either the top of the mountain, or down at the bottom. I thought it was cooler to eat at the top because we were able to look at the view of part of the mountain as we ate. After we were done eating, we would all go snowboarding and skiing all together as a group. We would keep going until we were either tired, cold, sore, or until the lift closed. 


Some days it would get really cold, especially at the top of the mountain. The first couple years were
probably the worst because we didn't buy the face masks to protect our faces from the coldness, or even 
frostbite. Although none of us got frostbite, somedays, it sure did seem like we did. In 2008, this was my lastyear skiing. One day it reached about -20 degrees at the top of the highest mountain there. That was the day we decided to buy face masks, so we could avoid getting frostbite. 


After we were done skiing, we would go home and get changed. Luckily, our home was about two steps away from the lifts. After we were changed, we would go to eat dinner. When we were all done eating, we would either go to the Fun Zone or the indoor pool. This was always a win-win situation for me because I loved doing both things. As a kid, I used to love playing in the arcade, sliding down the big blowup slides, and doing obstacle courses, and that was just exactly what the Fun Zone had! I also liked swimming because ever since I was little, I've been a swimmer. I've been swimming on a team for about 9 years now and it hasbecome one of my favorite sports.


The next year, in 2009, was my first year snowboarding! My parents signed my younger sisters, brother, 
and I up for lessons.  I still remember the first day I ever tried it, I probably wiped out about a billion times. The first time I went up to the top with the instructor, I fell in the woods. The instructor had to walk all the way up to the hill and pull me out. It wasn't the woods with an actual path either, which made it that much more difficult to get out. After falling in the woods, it made me actually want to go into the woods, but where there was a designated path. The instructor did not take us into the woods until he knew we were ready. The day he took us was the last day of our vacation, when we got to choose the path.


Going in the woods is probably my favorite part about snowboarding, to this day. My sister doesn't 
typically like it because she always gets stuck, but my brother and I love it. As of this year, it was our first year without lessons! We had been doing lessons for about 2 years and we got to level 7 out of 10. That was when my dad decided that it was time we ride by ourselves now. I liked riding with my brother and sister because we were all around the same speed and we were able to teach each other our specialties. I also likedriding together because we were able to choose which paths we wanted to go on, and we didn't have an instructor saying we couldn't go on them. 


As we got better, we went into the park which was full of ramps and jumps. I didn't really like the jumps
because I didn't like the feeling of being in the air. My brother loved the jumps, and when he didn't land it was funny to watch him wipeout. My favorite part about the park were the rails, some were straight, curved, and others dropped. The only bad thing about the ramps is that if you fell it hurt really bad, and you probably had a nice, big bruise about to pop up within an instant, but it was worth it! I would recommend this trip if you're intoskiing or snowboarding because there are three big mountains with tons of trails.


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What is an essay?

An essay is a writing which usually tells about the writer's point of view. Essays can describe, clarify, argue, and analyze a subject. The components of an essay are the introduction, thesis statement which is usually the last sentence in the introduction, body, and conclusion. The introduction and the conclusion are usually the not that long, while the majority of the essay is contained in the body.