The North Carolina-ers

The people from MosaicALC visited us at ExAlt and we had an awesome time! We went to Old San Juan, the beach, and Alex’s farm. In Old San Juan, we went to El Morro and stayed there a while, enjoying the wind. Then we went to Poet’s Passage, a store with a lot of frames with poetic words for sale. After that, we went to Señor Paleta, a popsicle store, and I bought an extremely delicious dulce de leche popsicle. At the beach, I put on some music on a speaker. But after a while, Alex wanted to put his own music, so I let him have the speaker. I tried some slackline, but failed miserably. I also had a lot of comversations with a lot of people. At Alex’s farm, we tasted some delicious oranges, we went to the lake and fed some fish, we ate soup and hamburgers (I stuffed myself by eating two hamburgers and a bowl of soup), and we went to a river

My ComicCon cosplay

First, you may be asking yourself: “What is a Comic-Con?”. If you don’t know, it is a convention where lots of people, mostly geeks, join to have fun, buy merchandise, meet new people with similar interests, and basically just be geeks for a whole weekend. Lots of people go there with their own cosplay, a costume based on a specific character. I plan on cosplaying for this year as a male version of Kyoko Sakura from Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Sheyla is going to help me sew the costume, @danithemaker is going to help me make Kyoko’s spear, and @anaiomy’s parents, who work at Comic-Con, are gonna help me with making the spear able to be entered at the con (because you can’t just bring any prop you like. Some are too dangerous). Below are the blueprints for the spear and the design for the costume.

Jaime’s house

Jaime Tirado is a friend of ours who visits ExAlt every week. He’s a famous  Puerto Rican painter and muralist. He is currently the resource person for the painting offering at ExAlt. He invited all of us to his house on Monday and we had a great time! First, we had a tour around the house. I saw a hammock and lay down on it for a few minutes. When the tour was finished, we went around the area to explore. I ate some orangees that were EXTREMELY yummy. I talked with Anaiomy’s parents about nature and stuff. At one point, I was very bored, so I asked Anaiomy’s dad, Johnathan, if he could help me climb a tree. He showed me the technique of the three points of contact. It means that you have 4 limbs (2 arms and 2 legs). At least three of them have to always be touching the tree at the same time. So I used that to climb the tree and we climbed pretty high up. While we were up there, we started taking pictures and videos of the ground and of ourselves. And then, all of a sudden, my eye started itching a lot. And when I say a lot, I mean a LOT. It felt as if an ant was in between my eyelid and my eye. It felt horrible. It itched so much, it became one of those itches that make you start coughing and sneezing because your body is trying to get whatever bothering you out of you system. It was disgusting. Johnathan told me to calmly climb down the tree and I did. We went and flushed my eye with water over and over again. It still itched a whole lot and my eye was trying to cry out whatever was in it. My mom helped me to the bathroom where she had seen some eyedrops and she helped me put them on. It itched a whole lot less but it was still itching a lot by then. It still hurt so much. After that, I went to where everyone was at a ravine closeby. I saw the little kids all in the little river and it was kinda fun besides my eye hurting. At some point, I was so tired, that I went and lay down on the hammock once more and fell asleep. While I was sleeping, I could feel my eye crying. Trying to take out of my system whatever was in it. I slept like 2 hours and when I woke up, my eye didn’t hurt anymore. It was such a relief. By that time, we were already late to leave, so we did a quick gratitude circle before leaving, and left to ExAlt. When we got back to ExAlt, people started wanting to buy the limbers I had and eventually we sold out. All in all, it was a great day and a wonderful experience despite all the pain

Territory War

This week, Nabori and I started playing a game called Territory War. It’s an awesome game about two teams of stick figures in a war to defeat the other. The teams can be of 1 to 6 stick figures. You can name your team, name your stick figures, and even change what they look like! The two teams take turns managing the stick figures one by one. Your goal is to kill all stick figures on the other team using rifles, grenades, bazookas, and even kicks. You can build platforms and walls to defend yourself or make it easier for you to transport yourself across the stage. The best thing about this game is that the rules and controls are rather simple, so anyone can play it! We even created a song about the game that you can listen to here. You can play online or locally with someone else. If you want to play this game, it’s available to play at http://www.notdoppler.com/territorywaronline.php

Returning to ExAlt

It feels good to be back! I missed ExAlt and all of it’s learners. Everyone has many ideas for this semester and I’m excited to do so many things. I want to finish the mural, kickstart our limbers business, and even travel to the other ALC’s!!! I have high hopes for this semester

Throwback!!! Shout-out to my childhood

This week I started playing 3D Pinball, Minesweeper, and other games on an old computer. I used to play these games a lot when I was a kid! Basically, this week was all about nostalgia. In 3D Pinball, I got the highscore by getting more than 1 million points! But then, @amaro2001 beat my record with about 2.3 million points. Just when he did that, he said “Ha! Beat that!” and gave me the computer to play a game of it. And guess what? I beat his record right there with about 2.5 million points!! We also played Minesweeper and I currently have the beginner record of 14 seconds. In other words, I’m awesome B)

Limbéate en ExAlt

This week we had a meeting to decide what we are going to do with our future limbers business. For those who don’t know, limbers are a sort of popsicle in a cup that is typical here in Puerto Rico, especially during times where the weather is hot or warm (which, on a tropical island, is basically always). Limbers can have many different flavors and we have a long list of flavors we want to sell. The first flavors we are going to try to make are lemon, milk, almond milk, peanut, oreo, and banana. We are naming our business “Limbéate en ExAlt”. Let’s hope our business sells!

Weiqi sure is fun (except when I lose)

Just kidding. Weiqi is always fun! It’s a Chinese board game that Alex brought directly from China when he lived there. It’s a game where you use black and white pieces that represent soldiers. Two players take turns putting pieces on the board and their goal is to surround the opponent’s pieces to conquer them and the territory. Each soldier conquered and each space of territory is 1 point. At the end, the player with the most points wins!