Rewriting Tasting the Sky

This week I am rewriting the ending of Tasting The Sky by Ibtisam Barakat for school, but I already liked how they ended it on a good note, so I thought I'd try and see how I'd flip the ending around.

As we hear the dreadful news of our leader Nasser's death, people carry coffins on the road to show their mourning and grief. My mom told me, that we have to move on and keep on rolling our lives, but for me, that's one of the hardest things.
     I am now in second grade, and I do not like it. I want to go back to first grade, so I can be with Lillian my favorite teacher. Sometimes, I would try and sneak into the first graders line into the class room, but they always saw me and took me out. After giving up I started to like my new teacher.
     At recess, I found one of Alef's friends looking really pale on the ground, so I thought I'd bring him home to make sure nothing happened to him. I put him in my pocket on the left side of my pants and went to the swing set  to play. In the past few weeks there has been a lot more airplanes flying in the sky, I don't like how they make such a racket when they fly. At the end of the day I went home and told my mom how I had found Alef's friend, but when I reached into my pocket instead of finding Alef's friend I found my fingers going through a hole in my pocket.
     I lost him I lost him I said in my head over and over again and again, my mother tried to comfort me, but I just couldn't stop thinking about it, I'm now the second person who has abandoned him. I asked my mom if I could look for him as fast as I could before it gets dark, she took a hesitant pause, then answered and said it was okay, but to make sure I got home before dinner and to take a flashlight with me. I thanked her so much and raced out the door looking for my new friend. Twenty minutes later, I was almost going to give up on the search, but I had one more place to look, the sun was setting and I needed to hurry, I ran to the school and looked at the swing set for my missing friend, when there was the biggest noise I had ever heard.
     About five minutes later I noticed I was on the ground my ears were screaming from a high pitch siren in my head, as I got up, I noticed the whole earth had gotten all shaken up, so I thought it must have been an earth quake. The next moment I was racing down the pathway to get back to my house and make sure everyone was okay. As I got closer I noticed other people were running the same way and a strong smell unlike any other smell started to fill my nose, I ran faster and faster until I couldn't go any more, up ahead instead of my beautiful house with it's neighborhood and nice trees with wild animals and bugs, there were houses on fire, and black ground ,and black sky, and black everything. The thing that made my stomach churn and my heart drop, was that my beautiful house and my wonderful family and everything I had, was now just a black crater. I couldn't look anymore, I quickly turned and ran to some black grass, as I threw up in it, but as I was getting back up, I noticed a black stick in the path toward what used to be my house I then realized, it was my long lost friend, my only friend I had left my only family I had left, is now dissolving right before my eyes, just like my family did.
     Today the sky is black, everything looks and feels dark as if all the love, all the peace is now turned to anger and revenge. No one is safe no matter where you go, because this is reality and nothing goes the way you wanted it to go, or at least that's how it ended up for me.

Pawley's Island

This summer for our vacation we went to Pawley's Island. We had an awesome time. We stayed there a whole week. Every day we went to the beach and played in the sand and water at all times. My sisters and I boogie-boarded a LOT. Almost the whole time we were at the beach, we boogie-boarded. We also caught and found hermit crabs, jelly fish, starfish, sea urchins, conch shells and tons of other cool sea creatures. I caught some ghost crabs (out of the water). Almost every morning we went to the beach early in the morning to collect shells before the tide started to rise and before other people got to them. We got up before the sun started to rise which was about 5:00 AM. We had an awesome time at the beach, and I hope you had a really fun summer, too.

A Messy Game

On Saturday I had my soccer game. It was really muddy; I slipped three times. You can probably guess that I was pretty muddy, I was. We won our soccer game three to zero. I scored two of those three goals. It was fun to get all muddy and wet (by the way, it was still raining during my game). I had lots of fun. When the game was over, I had mud all over my side, socks, cleats, shirt (both sides), legs, and arms (including my hands). It was really fun. By the time I got home, the mud had already started to dry up.

I was pretty messy.

My shin guards are still a little muddy.

I spent two hours cleaning my cleats. 

I took a shower as soon as possible. After that I sat down and took a nap.

Puppy fun

     Today Sadie was trying to itch under her collar. When Ellie and I had some free time we took off her collar and started to scratch her neck. We knew that was her favorite spot to be scratched. Every time we did scratch her neck she would always smile.

Isn't she adorable when she smiles!

   
The next day Renn got into some string she wasn't supposed to have, so I gave her some of my old string. She had a really fun time playing with it. She played with it for more than two hours. After that she was too tired to even notice me when I came into the room.

Snowed In

When I woke up this morning I found that there was a lot of snow, about one foot and three inches so far, because it was still snowing.

Look at all the snow!

 I got my snow clothes on as fast as I could after I ate breakfast. When I went outside, I was so excited. It hadn't snowed like this since we were at our old house, and it snowed about two feet. I thought I would first try and move around just to get used to it. Then all of a sudden Renn came out from under the porch and started to run towards me, but since the snow was so deep she  went slower so that that gave me a chance to try and get away (she still caught up with me no matter what). Then I went sledding with Lucy and Ellie. It was really fun, scary, exciting, and funny to watch the others going down a really fast slope. We had to make our slopes in certain places because there were so many trees in the way. By the way, most of the time we go sledding in the woods. My mom and dad came after a little bit to take some pictures and to see the slopes we made.

Ellie and I helped Renn get into the tree house.
(Renn got up the first three steps)

Renn was so excited when she got to the top.
(this was her first time in the tree house)

When we came back from the sledding I went to the back porch to see if there would be snow on it, and there was. It was a whole big pile of snow that was about three to four feet high. I instantly started to dig it out. When I was done it looked pretty good. I had made three entrances to come in and out of the igloo. Then I went inside to have some hot cocoa and warm up. The next day the snow was still there, but my igloo wasn't, it had fallen down over night because it snowed just enough to make it fall over. After I had been waiting outside I didn't know what I should do, then Ellie came out and asked me if I wanted to help her build an igloo. I said, "Yes."  When we finished it looked better than the one I made on the back porch. I guess because two people made it instead of one. 

This was very fun to play in.

We went into it when we were done and admired it. We took a little nap in it after a little while. Then when it started to get dark, we went inside and got into our pajamas and watched a movie. We had a blast and hope that it snows like this next year.