In less than a week, I'll be in South Africa. As a result of peer pressure, I am considering blogging. It seems that a number of my friends and extended family members will become intensely more interested in my life once it starts taking place on another continent. I actually find my life intensely interesting all the time (except the painful stretches devoted to studying mass spectrometry), but I suppose I can't blame them. At any rate, I realized that having a captive audience puts me in a powerful position. As long as I include some photos of wildlife and weird food, these friends and family members will listen to whatever I want to tell them. (This assumes that the majority of the wildlife photos are not of lichen, another of my unshared intense interests). If I actually manage to keep this up, five months is plenty of time to convey all sorts of important things about South Africa, and maybe even put in a plug for leafcutter ants, the coolest organism on the planet.

So here's important lesson #1: I am going to South Africa.

I love Legos. I have tons of Legos. Legos are fantastic, but it's going downhill. The oldest Lego sets are the best Lego sets. We got a really old set from a yard sale, and it is FANTASTIC. It provides the pieces and instructions to build a really neat car, it also shows a couple of pictures of other things you can build with the pieces. Some of the other ideas include a couple of steps, some just show the finished product. giving instructions like that forces kids to play, fiddle around, and use their creativity to create something that is their own.

Modern Legos don't encourage that. They provide detailed instructions for one set, with highly specialized pieces. Instead of having a lot of generic pieces that can be reorganized into anything they have specialized pieces that can only be used for one thing. Also, they have moved away from having things you build they have scenes you build. Basically Lego has moved away from letting us choose how to play and towards defining exactly how we should play.

I've been thinking about life and stuff recently and realized more of who I really am.

As a background to all of my life I am a artist. Mom recently read something for a class that talked about teaching and raising creative kids. She said that much of what it said directly to me. I am at my heart very creative.

I am a musician. My life has background music. There is always music in my head, sometimes it's at the front of what I'm thinking, sometimes it's hiding, but it's always there. I've always been very attached to sounds. I could immitate every sound in my life before I could talk.

Most of all I am a scientist. That is the plane I typically function on, art serves as a backdrop to how I function, and science is the foreground. I approach problems scientifically, and don't really believe most anything until it's proven to me.

To me interaction is the most valuable thing in my life. I've only realized this recently, but it's been blindingly obvious for a long time. My sixth grade year is probably the best year in my life. That is probably largely because Mrs. Kinkead, my 6th grade teacher, focused so much on group work. Every activity that I do I enjoy largely because of the people. I love working together and interacting with others. Marching band is all about working as a group to achieve something together. Science Olympiad boils down to the team in the end. When it's all said and done how you individually did doesn't really matter, it's how the team did. I have done basically nothing where I alone have done well, essentially everything I have achieved is with a team or a group.

Some random thoughts about life:

I'm incredibly lucky to have a wonderful family. Many, many people, especially teenagers, hate their family, especially their parents. I'm lucky to be in a family where we all like eachother.

This world would be a better place if we all tried to be more kind. Everyone can choose to do one more kind thing for someone. Say thank you every time anyone does anything for you. If you make sure they know you're glad they spent their time they will be happier, and more willing to help someone else. It's incredibly important to be respectful of others. Even if someone has radically different ideas or opinions than you, you should still be respectful.

There is so much hate and conflict in this world. The true answer to harted is love. Turn the other cheek. We can get infinitly more done through love than hate. Education is an invaluable tool. This is a really neat article that suggests that building more schools in Afghanistan would be more productive than senting more troops. I agree that education is almost always the answer.

Saturday was ISSMA Marching Band State Finals. We had an excellent performance and placed 9th of the 10 state qualifying bands. Although I would have like to have placed higher, I'm happy because we had an excellent performance.

We got up really early Saturday morning, went to school, ate breakfast, did one run-through of the show on the football field, and left for Lucas Oil Stadium in Indy. Lucas Oil Stadium is GIGANTIC. When you play on it you can only hear yourself, but if only a snare drum is playing (when we march on and off the field) it goes up and echoes back with about a half second delay.

Overall it was a really awesome experience!!