The Long Journey of Sarah and Lou

Andrew Chung

On July 18, 2011 families were on a cruise ship. The cruise ship has some engines failures. The captain was scary that the ship might go down and didn’t talk any passages.  The captain did a detour on an island for quick repairs to make a safe trip. All the families got off the ship to relax on the island.

When they got off the ship the earth started to shake.  All the families when back on the ship and the whirlpool came to life. The government thought all of them died. They were only two survives there. The two survives were Sarah and Lou. They were strangers and didn’t ever ask each other’s names. Lou a 15 year old geek nerd who didn’t have good survives skills. Sarah a 15 year old dumb fisher who has some survives skill, BECAUSE of TV. They didn’t like each other and didn’t want to help each other.                                                               

Eventually, Lou the smart one said they should help each other survives, because Lou was starving to death. They helped each other and lived with each other. Nothing could go wrong for them. Lou help see if the food they can’t is poison or not. While Sarah went and got all the food. She also started the fire and cooked the food. Lou goes and find the water.                                                                                                                                                           

One day Lou asked Sarah “did ever want to go back.” Sarah said, “I wish sometime to go back to my friends and have a normal life again.”Sarah justed sign and went to get food for us.  Lou was sad that they can never can never have a normal life again, because of the cruise ship. Lou trying so hard to find a way out of the island to live a normal live again.

So the really journey begins here where Lou and Sarah try to find a way out the island to live there normal knowing that there are gone forever. Lou tried to convince Sarah to find a way off the island. They decided to search the island to find materials to build a ship back home. Lou found a lot of materials, while Sarah carries them all. They found a lot, but not enough to build their ship.

The next day Lou got all the materials they needed to build their ship. After hours of hard work they were done at sunset. Being tried is bad for the next day, because they were going to need a lot of energy to make the ship go the right way. They found out which way is north and headed there. The ship could barley fit both of them, but they cramped in to make it fit.

After what seems hours of sailing they hit land. People were surprised to people wear old ragging cloths. The Cop though they were illegal immigrants. They soon found out that they were the only two survives of the cruise ship gone missing in 2011.

 Everything Happens for a Reason

Carolyn Truong

“Carolyn, drink your milk!” my mom and grandma yelled from the small kitchen downstairs.

I’m on vacation in Viet Nam back to my hometown; it was the summer of 2007. I sprinted downstairs to get milk. I gulped down my milk as fast as I can, so I can go back to watching TV. As I finished my milk, and I dashed upstairs to take a shower before I go to sleep.

After showering, and brushing my teeth, I looked at the clock and the clock strike ten o’clock. I went to wish my grandparents, cousins, uncles and aunties good night. I went back to my room and turned on the TV, and started watching Disney Channel. The subtitles on the TV made it harder for me to watch TV because I’m reading the subtitles instead of watching, as I was watching I heard a big “BAM!” I didn’t think it was that important, so I continued watching TV. The commercial was on, so I stared at the ceiling, I heard a “CRASH!” and a “BAM!” again. By now I was really anxious about what was going on outside. I approach the door, and opened it, I saw my grandma walking back and forth, and I decided to ask, “Grandma, what is all this noise?”

“I don’t know, Carolyn.” My grandma lied.

I went back and tried sleeping, but it was impossible, too much noise going on. Out of no where “BANG!” I got really scared, I ran out of my room, and hustled out of my room, and once I got out, I saw the electricity pole fall down. Examined the pole fall down, and I rushed to my room, and got all the expensive belongings I had with me.

The front porch looked like the safest place to be. Standing in my position with my uncles and aunties, I heard people around the neighborhood saying, “The house is slowly falling in the river!”

From observing what people around the neighborhood announcing, I wanted to go to the back of the house, and see if that was actually true, but if I went I might fell, since it was completely dark.

My cousins and I were hollering for help, since there was nothing to do to help us get down. By the time the police came it was too late, a lot of events had happen. We didn’t have a place to stay overnight, but my grandparent’s friend offered us to say at their place for tonight. The night went by really fast, since I was awake most of the time. Morning came, and my cousins and I went over my aunt’s house for the day. The adults were spending the day carry massive, loads of clothes, and furniture. I really wanted to go and help because I also have my clothes there, and I felt bad for letting other people take my belongings down. Late afternoon came, and I questioned Ba Tam (my aunt), “Can I go visit my grandparents, see if they are done?”

Ba Tam instructed, “I’ll take you if you really want to go,”

“Yes, I really want to go. I want to go get my Nintendo DS and start playing with it. Sitting is very boring,” I protested.

My aunt and I went and asked if everything was okay, and if they brought everything down. I really wanted to ask where my items were, but my grandparents were really worn out and sleepy. I didn’t want them to get mad.

I left with my auntie and she took me home, where the rest of the family is. I actually got to sleep, and rest for a full night. The bright sun shined through the windows curtains as I woke up; I showered, ate breakfast, and followed my grandma around the whole entire day. I was really tired, but I wanted to go see the house, “Grandma, can I go and see the house. I’m wondering what it looks like now,” I requested.

“Okay, if you want to Quynh (my Vietnamese name),” my grandma responded.

I went with my grandma, and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The beautiful house was about to completely fall. The words, “the house is about to fall.” I kept on hearing it over and over in my head. I was wondering what would happen to me, if I was downstairs? I also couldn’t imagine myself in that eerie accident.

Days went by, and I still had three weeks left. I went to Dam San; Dam San is another version of Raging Waters. I had a lot of fun. I spent most of the in Viet Nam was at the mall because it was really hot, and the mall had the air conditioning on.

From my experience in Viet Nam, I learned to enjoy everyday I’m living with family and friends. I am also very thankful for living in America because when an tragedy event happens, the police get to the place really fast, in Viet Nam, they come fast, but not really fast. I also realized that whatever happens has a reason behind it, like a painful breakup or an unexpected event. I thank the people that let my family and me, stay over at their house when the event happened, I wouldn’t know where I would be now, if those generous people didn’t help us. I also learned that praying is very important. Right before I went to sleep on that day, I prayed for a peaceful and safe night, but the peace didn’t come, but the safety part came.

  2010 Experiences

Davin Tang

In my experiences in this year I have learned a lot even though the year is only halfway finished. There are three major things that I enjoyed this year and that was Biology, my friends, and going to Mr. Hoang’s tutoring on the last week before the summer started. Because of these reasons are why I enjoyed this year so far and I hope that nothing bad will happen at the end of this year that will make this a bad year and make me hate it.

My first reason is that my Biology class taught me a lot of fun things and meeting new people was a great experience and I want it so that all my classes were like that class. I was sad when one of my friends in that class was dropping out of school so that he can get his G.E.D. because he didn’t have enough credits to graduate from high school. He was home schooled so when he went back to high school he didn’t get the credits that he needed to graduate and he decided to get his G.E.D. in order to get accepted into an ivy league college (I think). I was happy in this class cause he did a lot of experiments and those experiments got us to learn more about life than what we learned just by lessons and homework. Many of the experiments were about how what we were learning worked and they were fun at the same time because they showed us that what Biology was teaching us was true and they showed how living organisms worked on the inside. One of my favorite things was when we were working on Genetics since we were learning by what would happen if we had two superheroes as parents and see what kinds of kids would they have and what their powers would be. We also saw a lot of organisms through a microscope so we even saw them more and that was really cool because we were also showed how they eat and what their insides are like through worksheets. My favorite thing in Biology that we did was when we dissected a frog and got to see a miniature autonomy of the human body because my teacher told us that it was similar to the human body’s autonomy and we couldn’t dissect a human body for Biology since that was illegal. In the end I missed my friends at the end because they were a good class and I want to be in a class like that again since that class was so much fun and we got to do so much as a class together.

The second reasons are my friends because I made a lot more friends this year than the last year but the thing that I hated was that one of my friends that I had in my classes was in 4 classes with me this year. Most of the time during break we moved around the campus because we couldn’t decided a place to hang but in the end we found a place and it was close to the next class that we had to go to. I enjoyed the time when we were playing card games and then a teacher walked by us and told us that we better not be gambling then one of my friends said I bet you $5 that we are not betting then we all started laughing. My friends were fun this year because I have a lot of them now and some of them were from Mr. Hoang’s tutoring and they were great but some of them were weird even though they are still my friends. I kept in touch with some of them because they either left on their own or they got kicked out for doing something they were not supposed to and got in trouble. They are all very good people to me except one of them which is gay and very touchy to a lot of people which is a very bad thing for a lot of the people at the tutoring but we all know that he is just kidding and doesn’t mean it. Because of my friends I had to make a facebook since they wanted me to have something that they can contact me with and so far its very good right now. I have a lot of friends on facebook now and I believed that there are some more of them that I don’t remember their names unfortunately since now I can’t keep in contact of them. Even though some of them can be annoying they can also be fun though most of the time I don’t get the jokes the people that I hang out with oddly since they understand it and I most of the time don’t think that some of them are that funny and I hang with them because I knew them since 7th grade. There have been a lot of things that me and my friends gone through together and I hope that next year we will resolve some of the issues that we are going to get the following year.

Finally, my last reason that this year is so good is because of the last week we had of Mr. Hoang’s tutoring since we had a party during that last week that we were going to show up for until later or September. All of the things we did during the party were fun and were annoying at the same time cause we had cake, Asian food, and drinks since we wanted this to go great. The party was for everyone’s last day of tutoring because it was celebrating that we all graduated (I hope) and it was a reminder that we should make the following year better than this year. That one week was the highlight of my graduating because I wasn’t going to see most of them until the end of summer and that was going to be a bummer to have. When I went to the summer school I was happy when I got to see some of my friends there I was happy that I knew somebody there which was a good thing to have. During the party what was sad was when we had to get rid of the cake that we made to look like a duck and when the little kids were eating the cake like crazy. Happily what we had was panda express so the Asian food was pre-made cause we didn’t have enough time to go make real Asian food by hand and we were rushing to make this party so it probably one of the reasons why it could have gone better. Most of us brought stuff for the party except for the people who showed up at last second and one of them owed people some stuff that he needed to give them but he never got to it yet. That party had a lot of food and we couldn’t eat all of it so I think we gave most of it to the little kids since we were partying in the game room and they go there to play games during break. We wanted to do the same thing next year if we could since this party could have gone better and we wanted to see if it could if it was planned better if we knew what we were doing now. I am going to miss this year because this party was one of the memories and I might not want to part with it since we made that duck and we had to throw it away.

In conclusion I enjoyed this year so far because of my Biology class, my friends, and the party that we had on the last week of Mr. Hoang’s tutoring and those are the reasons why I am going to miss this year. In the end I enjoyed this year even if we only went through half of the year so far and I had a great time this year I had a lot of fun with my friends cause we did a lot of things together and a lot bad/good things happened.

 The War Against Terrorists

D.K.

Sergeant Wilson was selected to begin his career with the British Special Ops team at a training camp in the United Kingdom. He begins training for Wilson’s first mission. Their mission is to raid a terrorist cargo ship in search of a nuclear weapon. Wilson boards the ship in the Bearing Sea with Captain Johnson and “Ghost” and several other British Special Ops members. They find the nuclear device after they kill several Russian terrorists aboard the ship. The team takes the cargo manifest, which reveals evidence of ties between the Russian terrorists and a rebel group in the Middle East. The ship is then shot down by a Russian aircraft and begins to sink. Luckily the team escapes in time without losing a single man.

The United States’ government learns that the Russian terrorist leader Maximus Petrov is in alliance with a Middle Eastern separatist leader named Kiral Kabul. They quickly send the U.S. Marines to stop the uprisings in the Middle East. President Abdul Aybak of a Middle Eastern country is executed on live television by Kiral Kabul. Kiral Kabul then takes control of the Middle East.

The British Special Ops informant Mikula is compromised and imprisoned by Russian terrorist. Captain Johnson, Sergeant Wilson, and “Ghost” quickly try to save Mikula. They meet up with the “good” Russians to help find Mikula. After some sniping they find him and get him in the helicopter to return to base.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Marines 1st Force Recon led by Lieutenant Williams deploys as the first wave to search for Kiral Kabul. However, they are too late and instead aid other American forces fighting. They do this by helping out a stranded tank. Lieutenant Williams and Sergeant Smith act as mentors to Sergeant Jordan because this is his first time in war. Sergeant Jordan turns out to be a great help to the Marines as he was one of the few men left to help the stranded tank.

A MiG shot down the helicopter that Captain Johnson, Sergeant Wilson, “Ghost”, and Mikula were in.  They are forced to reach the extraction point by taking out several patrols. The team is saved by an AC-130 and is quickly evacuated.

In the Middle East the U.S. Marines get the tank back on the road and escape to the extraction point. After that Sergeant Jordan and Lieutenant Williams are on the ship to save a shot down helicopter. After they save them a nuke goes off. Lieutenant Williams is dead and Sergeant Jordan has a mortal wound and bleeds to death. They were marked K.I.A.

Captain Johnson’s team learns of the location of Kiral Kabul. They quickly kill him and soon after many terrorist close in on them. They make a narrow escape with the help of Sergeant Smith and the U.S. Marines. Both teams then unite and then plot their attack on Maximus Petrov’s son Khalid Petrov. They find Khalid and try to persuade him to tell the British were his father is, but commits suicide to leave the British and Americans without a lead.

Afterwards they learn that Maximus Petrov has nuclear weapons. They reach the nuclear facility right when twelve nuclear warheads are launched and are about to hit the United States East Coast. They have twelve minutes to get to get inside the facility and deactivate the nukes. They deactivate the nuclear warheads just in time and the most of the debris falls into the ocean. The teams quickly escape in cars but are being pursued by the Russian terrorists. They are about to cross a bridge when it is shot down.

The teams call for help while trying to hold off the terrorists. They are informed that help will come in ten minutes. They all know that they will be dead by then. Many marines are killed and help is only two minutes away when a gasoline tank explodes and incapacitates many soldiers. Sergeant Smith tries to get the wounded Sergeant Wilson out of the line of fire when Smith is killed. Maximus Petrov and his last two men then kill off the remaining soldiers including “Ghost”. Wilson looks over to the wounded Johnson to see he passes a pistol to Wilson. Then the helicopters come and distract Petrov and his men while Wilson shoots them from behind. In the end only Captain Johnson and Sergeant Wilson survive.

  Near-death Experience

Helen Young

Last summer in Milpitas I was with Alan going to the swimming pool near his grandma's house. We opened the door to the swimming pool. As soon as we got in there were not a lot of people there so I took off my clothes because my swimsuit was under my clothes.

I put my stuff with my cousin’s mom and I dived into the deep side but as soon as got into the pool my chest started hurting because I had a hard time breathing my cousin’s mom asked” Are you sure you’re okay?” I said, “I am fine.” And swam to the shallow side went out of the water and cannoned balled again. I did this at least 4 times in a row.

Then I said to Andrew” Lets go to the deep side.” He followed me with a little doughnut floater. As soon as we got to the deep side Andrew went out of the water and cannoned balled in the water.  He was away from the wall and had trouble swimming. I swam and brought him to the wall.

All the sudden I heard Splash splash thump boom splash. I ignored it then I saw Alan coming toward me. “Oh shoot why now?” I thought. Then without a second haste I dived into the pool and went as deep as I can and swam the dolphin kick and when I came up I was at 3 feet and Alan was in 6 feet.

As soon as I saw Andrew I swam as fast I can to the deep side as soon as I got to the 6 feet I got Andrew to the wall then I was relaxing then I hear splish splash then again ignored it then all the sudden I felt a heavy weight on me then all I could see was blurry blue I realize that I was in the water and I couldn’t breathe “ damn this weight is so freaking heavy no matter how much I try I can’t get to the surface and I cannot die here! So what to do…. Hmm ah! I can go deeper in to the pool to get the weight off me and swim as fast as I can to get up to the surface.” I thought, “ It’s a worth to try.” My chest was beating really hard as I try to squirm out of the weights reach and I went deeper into the pool then I was swimming as fast as I can toward the surface.

As soon as I got to the surface I was breathing really hard gasping for air then I realized that the weight was Alan!  “What were you doing? You do know you almost KILLED ME YOU IDIOT! What?  Do you want me dead?” I yelled he just said,” I was putting on my goggles what was wrong?”

I still hold a grudged against him till this day and forever.