Hello! This is Sophia! We may be staying in a boat house thing in Amsterdam. We have some connections there, but it didn’t manage to score us a free place to stay. As we were looking for places to stay in Amsterdam on the internet, we found a cute little boat that is available for renting for a few days while we’re there. It’s a bit odd I have to say, but it looks comfy, and it’s all about the experience, anyway. It sits on the water in Amsterdam, so we could literally be sleeping while rocking back and forth on top of the water. How nice! It does worry me that I might get sea sick. I don’t know if you can on a boat that small, but the last time I was on a big ship (an Alaskan Cruise Ship) I got pretty sea sick. Anyway, no worries, we’ll figure something out quick-like and if we don’t oh, well… we’ve got the Marco Polo. Update: I swear, this van is going to be more deluxe than most of the hotels I have stayed at.

I watch the Amazing Race, and their recent episode has done nothing but excite me more for visiting. I can’t believe I am talking so much about all the places we’ll go without even experiencing them. I feel like I already know the whole world from studying and reading about it (I am a geography fanatic. I was going to add another page under my page about it but then I thought it would kind of be obsolete.), but I guess I will never actually know what traveling there will be like until I experience it.

Today, all is well for me. I have accomplished WAY more than I normally do on a day like this. Wait. All is not well for me today. I almost forgot that I forgot to go meet my friends for lunch today. Sad face inserted. Oh, the sad, and lonely life of a homeschooler. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAnyway, my grandparents (on my mom’s side) are visiting today all the way from Indiana. They are supposed to arrive any minute now, and my mom is gone for an hour running errands and dropping my lil’ sis off at harp. Hmmm… Lil’ sis…that phrase doesn’t work for me, doesn’t accurately represent my persona…Okay.

EVTC (The track club I go to) started for the short season last week. Sadly, I could not attend due to major sickness followed with, if not accompanied by boredom. Tuesday was my first day of the short season and I went with the distance group since I run the 800 and 1500. We worked out really hard (for example HILLS) and it was really hot and sunny. Public middle school track is basically for weaklings (no actual offense intended), especially if you are a sprinter. My sister did a trial day with the sprinters and she concluded very early on that track was simply not for her. She’s an Ice Skater, what can I say? I think that the heat combined with the 200 was too much for her. She’s a sprint full force kind of girl. No endurance required. Even the 200 is too much for her, but she has some pretty darn good blazing speed. She could definitely run the 100 or the hurdles. For me, I like the joy of a 2-5 minute race. The 800 is perfect in every way from the length, to the strategy to the feeling to the strength needed to push yourself. I think I have found my race! I ran the 400 since I was 9 or 10, but in the end, the sprints that I wanted to be fast enough to run didn’t work out for me. My 400 was pretty good. I was second in my school district (67.54), but not quite good enough. I may not have had the best last season, but it was definitely a season of discovery. I was reluctant to try middle distance because I thought that people wouldn’t see me as cool because I wasn’t as fast (WHAT?????) If there’s one thing I learned, it’s that people will think you are SUPER cool as a distance runner. You need to do what you are good at and what you enjoy. For me the 800 is the best race EVER and the coolest girl on the track team ran middle distance.

Sorry if I went a little off topic if you know what I mean. If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s jabbering on endlessly. If track really isn’t your cup o’ tea, and you are disappointed in me because you thought this was a travel blog, I owe you an apology. Sorry.

See you soon!