This summer, I went to Nantucket. Nantucket is a small island on Massachusetts. I visited my grandparents house on the island for around 2 weeks. On most of the days we spent there, we would usually go to the beach. We went on my grandpa’s motor boat, we went on bike rides, we went sailing and we went windsurfing.

The biggest thing that I learned how to do at the beach was windsurfing. I learned how to go up wind, and how to run which is going with wind. I also learned about the parts of the windsurf, such as the boom, the board, base, mast, extension, the sail, etc. I had to be thinking about 10 things at once. After I up-hauled, I felt so much relief. In my opinion, up-hauling is the hardest part of windsurfing so once I was done up-hauling it got a lot easier. When you’re windsurfing you feel like you are flying above the water. On my first day, I could barely up-haul the sail, but by the last day, I was flying through the wind.

This is a picture of me windsurfing. This was on the first day I went windsurfing. In the picture, I am just getting ready to start moving.

This is the beach that my grandparent’s house looks onto. The red designs on the sand are seaweed. It is called red tide, where tide comes in and puts red seaweed all over the sand. Every morning, I would wake up and walk my dogs on this beach.

My mom, my sister and I went on a 1 hour bike ride. We biked to this lighthouse called the Sankaty Lighthouse. It is a big historical sight on Nantucket. When I went to the lighthouse, I learned a lot about what the lighthouse was used for, and about the family that used to live by the lighthouse.

In Greece, my family and I climbed Mount Olympus. Our plan was to hike halfway and spend the night at a refuge, and then the next day climb to the top and explore the peaks, and the next day, hike home. There was such a big climate change while we were hiking. It was interesting how at the starting of the hike, we were wearing shorts and t-shirts, but by the time we got to the refuge we were wearing sweatpants and winter jackets. My favorite part about hiking Mount Olympus was hiking the peaks. There were a lot of pretty views at the top.

There are four peaks on Mount Olympus. They are Mytikas, Skala, Skolio and Stefani. Mytikas is the highest peak of Mount Olympus. My family and I hiked Skala, and we attempted to hike Mytikas but by the time we were half way through hiking it, it started thundering and lightning so we decided to hike back to the refuge. One feeling that kept occurring during the hike was fear. I kept thinking about all of the things that could go wrong. What if it got to dark to hike any longer? What if we ran out of water? What if one of us fell and we couldn’t keep going? In a way, all of those fears helped me. During the hike, I learned how to keep going, and face my fears.  Overall, hiking Mount Olympus was an amazing experience.

On day two of hiking, after hiking to Skala we attempted to hike Mytikas. This picture is on the way to Mytikas. As you can see, there are rainclouds above us. This is right before it started raining and we decided to turn back. From Skala to Mytikas it is around 2 hours.

On day two of hiking, after we had hiked and slept at the refuge, we went to explore the peaks. The peak in this picture is Skala. This was the peak that we hiked to before we hiked to Mytikas. It was so cool to be above the clouds. From the refuge to Skala, it took around 2 hours.

This picture was taking on the first day of hiking, when we were hiking to the refuge. This is at the end of our journey, when we are all very tired. It took around 4 hours to get from the bottom to the refuge.

My friend Olivia and I raised the money to stop a Yulin festival that happens every year in Southern China. We found out about this festival online because there are a lot of people are raising awareness about it by showing sad pictures of the dogs at the Yulin festival. The pictures made Olivia and I feel as if we had to do something about it. The Yulin festival is a dog meat festival where dogs are taken from their homes, skinned and boiled alive, kept in small cages and beaten really badly! 10,000 dogs die each year because of this festival. We raised money by having a bake sale where the money would go to a foundation that will hopefully make the Yulin festival stop!

When my family and I went on a trip to Greece, we got the pleasure of seeing lots of Greek temples and sites. The sites included the Parthenon, Delphi, the Temple of Poseidon, the Temple of Agamemnon, the Acropolis and much more. It was very interesting to see the remains of lots of Greek temples because whenever I was at a temple, I would think about all of the people who must have been there thousand of years ago. I would imagine them going there every day to worship the gods. The temples really gave me a good idea of how the Greeks lived back then.

One of the structures that really stood out to me was the Palace of king Agamemnon. The Palace of Agamemnon stood out to me because last year we read the Adventures of Ulysses and studied it, and in a way, Agamemnon started the story of Ulysses because he was one of the kings who started the Trojan War. I found it cool how much of the temples and structures and palaces that the archeologists were able to recover. Overall, the Greek temples were amazing to see and I gained lots of knowledge from looking at them.

This is the site of Delphi. Delphi is full of sites and temples such as the temple of Apollo. Delphi is on the side of a mountain, and I kept thinking about how that was the perfect place to put temples. There was also a Delphi museum that we went to, and got to see a lot of old pottery, and sculptures.

This picture is of the Palace of Agamemnon. We saw the Palace of Agamemnon in a town called Myceane at the very end of our trip. Once you get to the top of the hill that the structure is on, you can see the whole palace!

This is a temple of Poseidon. It is just outside of Athens. It is very similar to the Parthenon, (which we also went to) because the columns look alike.