Carved Watermelon- C

For the French Club picnic, I decided to try to make a snack that was refreshing and healthy, since I knew a lot of the other food would be junk food and it would be very hot outside. The first search result for 'creative fruit salad' was a carved watermelon, which was perfect since we had just bought three! I added other fruits to make it brighter, and used a mini scoop to take out the watermelon meat. I decided to make it pretty simple because I was afraid of messing up, but I added some decoration around the outside as well. The end result was an adorable dish to take to the picnic and a bunch of leftover watermelon which I used to make 'agua de sandia,' a typical Nicaraguan drink, for later (1 hour). I love the idea and I'll probably use this in the future as a healthy and energizing contribution!

Zumba- A

Since mid-April, I've been to three more zumba classes (3 hours). However, I've tried two different teachers, which all have completely different styles! One of them, Logan, is the one I'm most used to, but it's been good to switch it up and try new songs. By now I have a group of 5 people that I meet regularly. We all enjoy it because the hour flies by so quickly despite the hard work!

Biking Hawthorne Trail- A

My friends Alex and Ellie have talked to me about biking for CAS hours many times in the past few weeks, and we finally got together to bike to Hawthorne Trail on one of our days off from school. I hadn't ridden a bike since biking home from work last summer, so it was a bit of a painful reminder that I need to work on my quad muscles. We went from my house to the second overlook on Paynes Prairie and back, which was about 10 miles total. We also walked around a little bit on a horse trail that we found, but went back to the bikes after a banana spider almost scared me to death (total of 3 hours). It was short, but on a hot day seemed like plenty of exercise. We were even lucky enough to see wild horses from the overlook view, which was unfortunately also spotted with cars from I-75 and Highway 441.

One of the few things I like about Florida

Cooking and music- C

My friends and I thought it would be a good idea to continue the international food activity that we did at the beginning of the year. This time, though, we loosely followed a Mexican cookbook to make delicious fresh salsa and vegetarian refried beans, and then made up the rest of the ingredients to put in to tortillas (2 hours). The food turned out great, despite the long time it took to make! We even fed four of our senior friends as a reward for finishing their IB history test, and they thought it was delicious.

We decided to dance to latin music while cooking

Our delicious ingredients, including grilled chicken for Alex and vegetable protein for Ellie and me

After eating, Alex taught a mini-lesson on the guitar. We learned how to play the first chords of one of my favorite songs, Smoke on Water by Deep Purple, and the basic base line for rhythm and blues (1 hour). I used to play the guitar, but that was about 10 years ago, and this activity reminded me of how difficult it is! I don't believe Alex when he says that it's one of the easiest instruments, but he certainly makes it sound that way. He also played a Spanish Lullaby which was amazing, and if I had more time, I would certainly try to learn that song... but for now I'll stick with re-learning the piano, flute or drums.

Asian dinner- C

Because of our break for IB/AP testing, I decided to take advantage of having some extra time to explore my vegetarian cookbook that I got for Hanukkah last year. I've had a thing for Asian food since my trip to Japan over the summer, and decided to try to match how tasty the tofu tasted in it's home continent. I ended up making a rice vinegar, tamari and butter glazed fried tofu garnished with spring onions and toasted garlic, which even my brother thought was tasty. Of course, I had to add a bowl of Indian lentils, as it is one of my favorite healthy proteins to eat since I don't eat regular meat. I also used our new rice maker to cook rice with sea salt, one of Asia's staple foods (total of 2 hours). I had a lot of fun experimenting with food that was healthy, very tasty, and not too hard to make. My goal is to learn 2 new recipes each month for the rest of the year.