Leah Chine's Blog

Dear Diary,

Can you believe summer is almost over?! And I’m so busy for the next month that it’s basically over for me! Well, last week I went to camp kanata!! It was SO much fun. I got to play beach volleyball everyday, cook everyday, and do archery!! I also got to go swimming everyday which was super fun! And I didn’t even get kanata funk, which are these red bumps you get all over. I’m so glad I didn’t because I hear it itches… anyway, I also got the chance to climb up an alpine tower and I got really far up! And I got to swing off a rope into the lake. The first time I tried I was SO scared, but the second time, I actually opened my eyes, which was less scary then with my eyes closed! And SO much fun!! All in all, camp kanata was great, and I learned how to cook! I really missed my family though, so I was glad to be back. But next week I’m going to a volleyball camp, and it goes from 9-6pm everyday! I’m going to be so worn out! But then I’ll get to just relax a couple weeks until school starts again. OH! I never told you! Beth is pregnant!! Everyone is so excited for the baby, and now we’ll have more money with Beths job and we’ll have the space because of the new upstairs to our house. Everything seems to be working out great in our house. I hope you, whoever you are, are having a great summer, too. Well, I have to go. Leo and I are going to play a game of volleyball and I’m going to kick is butt! Tata for now!

Love,
Leah Chine

Dear Diary,

I am  SO sorry I haven’t written in such a long time! My days have been so busy, its wake up in the morning, go to school, go to volleyball, come home, eat dinner, do homework, go to bed. I have had no free time what so ever except the occasional weekend which I spend time with friends. But I guess that is no excuse. I made you a promise that I would post at least once a week, and I failed to keep that promise. Please forgive me. Now that it is summer I’m a little less busy because the volleyball season is over and school is out. All I have now is camps upon camps upon more camps! Since summer’s let out, I’ve already gone to three different volleyball camps and 5 volleyball clinics. I’ve also worked a bunch at Beths bakery. Yummy, fresh, food everyday for lunch. Oh! Next week, I’m going to a camp in North Carolina called camp Kanata. It’s a sleep away camp, so I’ll definitely miss everyone, but it’s going to be super fun! Well, I will very much try to keep my promise this time, now that I have more time to get on. But I’m still quite busy. Please forgive me if I forget to write for a few weeks. I promise to keep in touch and write as much as possible. I gotta go, Leo and I are going to the pool, this should be interesting… Tata for now!

~Leah Chine

Dear Diary,

My life, right now, is consisting of school, friends, and sports. Mostly sports though. I had a tournament on Sunday! It was soooo much fun! It was with the traveling volleyball team I am on. We got first! I found it funny that, even on the smallest uniform and sweats size they had, it was still too big for me! Im just short. I’m trying to keep up my promise of writing once a week. I hope Rio and Allena are doing the same. Oh! I’m doing really well in school! My teacher still hates me… maybe that’s because I always correct her… But I would appreciate it if she would teach us the correct things! I mean, I didn’t even know exactly what we were learning about but I still knew to correct her mistakes so we would learn the correct thing. Maybe I should tone that down a bit? But, I don’t want to be learning the wrong thing… Oh well. She’s just going to have to deal with it. Oh! I forgot to tell you about how much of a hit Beths new shop is! Everyone in town goes there, and they love it! I go everyday after my private or team volleyball practice. I wish I could go more, though. After moving here to Virginia, I haven’t really gotten to know the town, and this has given me the chance. Everyone here is really nice, and they like coffee, especially with Beths special breakfast bread, I know, you would have never thought there would be a breakfast bread! But it is delicious! Especially dipped in olive oil, yum yum! Oh wow, now I’m getting excited about getting breakfast there tomorrow morning! Breakfast bread here I come! In 10 hours… hehe. Oh and also, I do believe that I have told you we were getting an additional floor to our house, but if I haven’t, well, I just did! So now that things have been going so well at Beths shop, we’ve gotten enough money to pay back the people who loaned us the money to start the shop, and to buy some nice furniture for the new floor! I can’t wait to go furniture shopping! In Spanish that is voy a comprar muebles! But I guess you didn’t really need to know that… ehe. Well, I gotta go to bed if I want yo get to the shop and get my bread! Tata for now!

Love,
Leah Chine

Dear Diary,

I am SOOOO sorry that I haven’t written in such a long time! Everything for me has been extremely busy! All with having to help Beth with her store because it was so busy there because everyone in town loved it! And also with school and volleyball and friends, it has all just been so overwhelmingly busy the past few months! But I feel so bad because I love writing on my blog. I think its a fun way to get out what I have to say. So, again, I am so sorry for having not writtin in such a long time! I hope that you will forgive me. It will take me some time to write, but I promise you I will try to at least once a week. But if I don’t, just please comment on something because I will get the email and remember to write to you! I guess I don’t really have much more to tell you but I promise I will try to write more! Please keep on reading! Tata for now!

Love,

Leah

Happy Thanksgiving!

Dear Diary,

Happy Thanksgiving! I can’t wait for Thanksgiving to be here!!! Oh how I love turkey. Yesterday, Beth took be shopping for “before Christmas gifts” and she spoiled me! I got a lot of new clothing that I love! It all started with a really pretty scarf… Well, my favorite thing that I got are these slipper-type things and they are super soft and super cozy. I love the pattern that it has. It is a tanish color with a bow and little pom-poms on the end. They are so nice! I also got some nice and fuzzy, dark brown winter boots. They are kind of like uggs, but I only got them to keep my feet warm in the cold weather. I love wearing them with jeans. Have you noticed that if you have just a plain, single colored, boring shirt, you can brighten and color it up with a scarf? Man do I love scarfs. They are sooo pretty and they keep my neck extra warm. But, back to Thanksgiving. I bet Beth is going to make a delicious turkey and mashed potatoes with gravy and warm apple cider and pumpkin pie with vanilla ice cream! Oh boy, it sure does sound like heaven! Speaking of heaven, when I’m done reading a book called “To Kill a Mocking Bird” I’m going to read a book called “The Lovely Bones” about a girl who got killed and now she’s up in heaven watching everything that her family is doing. Doesn’t that sound good??? Well, I’m sorta running out of things to say which is a huge shocker  to me! Oh right! My teacher, Ms. Watley, being so clumsy, fell on her way to her car after school and broke her jaw! Now she has it wired shut and she has to talk with her teeth clenched together! It’s probably one of the funniest things I have ever seen! So, as you can see, school’s been good. I got a 105 on my math test because I didn’t miss any and I got the bonus right. It was so easy! I’m in this system at school called AG. I don’t know what it stands for but I think it’s for kids who aren’t as smart as the others. I wonder why some of the smartest kids in the class are in it. Unless they aren’t as smart as I think they are. I mean, I’m not very smart. Rio and Allena say I am but, I don’t know. Leo said that “To Kill a Mocking Bird” is a high school level book and he didn’t read it until he started college. But I don’t believe him. I think he’s just trying to get me to think I’m smart. I’ll have to remember to ask Rio what AG means. Well, I’m gonna go read. Tata for now!

Love,

Leah Chine

Dear Diary,

The fact that anyone wanted to be my friend was really astonishing. I met this really nice girl named Annabel in class a couple of days ago, and we became friends right away. She then introduced me to her friend named Matthew and now we are friends, too. We all agree that Ms. Watley isn’t very nice, but, we can’t do anything about that I suppose… Well anyway, today I am going over to Annabel’s house and we are going to meet Matt (that’s Matthew’s nickname) at the movies. We are going to see “Where the Wild Things Are.” I am so excited. Oh, I almost forgot to tell you. Alex asked Rio out! I guess you could say they are a couple now. They go on a lot of dates to the skate park. Talk about boring. I think a fun first date would be going to a water park or hanging out around town and doing stuff. You know, nothing too exotic because you want to get to know the person before it gets to a higher level. But what do I know? I’m only 8. So, as I was saying earlier, I’m going to see a movie today and I am super excited. I hear that “Where the Wild Things Are” is a great movie. I remember when mom used to read it to me so I wouldn’t have nightmares when I was going to sleep. Man, I loved that book. I wonder if the movie will be anything like it… I doubt it. Usually movies are completely different from books. Ms. Watley says that you should always read the book before you see the movie because books have more detail and are the real thing, when movies are just copies and they had to take out parts so it wouldn’t be too long. We have to listen to her silly sayings like that every day. One time, I think it was last week, she gave us a lesson on sneezing. Sneezing! Ms. Watley said that when we had to sneeze, we should just hold it in and then let it out in the stinky outdoors. The outdoors aren’t stinky. That’s probably just her skunk perfume. Talk about stinky! Well, I better go get ready, I’m still in my pj’s. Tata for now!

Love,

Leah Chine

This is Alex Strait, Rio's "friend."

Dear Diary,

I promised I would start writing more, and I that I would get on more than once a week, and I am going to keep that promise. Like I said earlier this week, I was going to have a highlight of the day… so, here it is: Earlier this evening, my volleyball team had a very intense match against the other school. They were very good and could be a threat to our perfect record of 0 wins, 7 losses. As you may or may not know, in high school volleyball, you have to play 5 matches unless one team wins 3 times in a row. The first match we played, we won, but in volleyball, you have to win my two points which we didn’t get until the score was 55 to 56. A girl on our team named Mikala scored the last point and we went on to get ready for the next match. Since I am the libero, I have to be in and out of every game at any time, so I get a lot of playing time in. But, anyway, we weren’t ready to celebrate our first win because we had to stay focused, because most of the time, when one team wins the first game, the get unfocused and the other team ends up winning.  And this happened to us. But the game was another close one: 21 to 25. The next game, we won, and then the fourth match, they won, and both teams were getting ready to play the last match. The game was tied up, 4 to 4, with one match left. Now, I hadn’t been on top of my game today, so I really needed to get focused.  When they served the ball over, I hit it to the setter, and our best spiker spiked it over. It was our ball now, and my turn to serve. I got my first one over, and five more after that. Then, when they finally hit the ball back over, we weren’t ready, so they got to serve. The scored ten points on us so the game was now us: 5, them: 10. When we finally got the ball back over, we only got one point off of them on our serve and then they got it, they scored ten more points so the score was now us: 6, them: 20. It was the most stressed out thing that had ever happened in my life of volleyball. And then, it was finally my turn to serve again. I got my first serve over. I had been practicing a new serve technique that I thought might help me with my aiming. It seemed to be working because scored 10 more points off of my serve, all aces. When their team called a time out, the score was us: 16, them: 20. I still had some catching up to do. I had to serve nine more consecutive (one of my vocab words in class, I’m in the advanced group!) serves if we were going to win, and, like all other goals I’ve set and completed, I was going to get this one. I served five more over so we were now 1 point ahead of them, and them I scored three more. The score was now us: 24, them: 20. Even if I messed up on this serve and we lost, I would still be proud that I scored 18 serves in a row! But, I had to wait to see if this point, the point that I was to serve over, the point that meant we won, or the point that meant we would still go on with the game, helped us, or hurt us because the other coach called another time out. Our coach doesn’t do that. He thinks we should figure it out on our own… Anyway, he gave us some encouraging last words before we stepped onto the court. The whistle blew. I dribbled the ball a few times. I threw the ball up, and I smacked it as hard as I could, forgetting everything I had been taught in volleyball, just letting my body do the work. The serve made it over. They hit it back on the first hit. I made a perfect pass to the setter, she set it up. But the set was too far back, so I had to run up, and I did the most crazy thing I have ever done before. I spiked it! I smacked the poop out of that ball and hit one girl on the other team so hard in the face her nose started to bleed and I was to numb from what I had just done to feel any emotion at all. All I could hear was the fuzzy roaring of the crowd. Had we won? My move was legal because I was behind the 10 foot line. Then I realized I was looking at my shoes. I looked up; everyone in the crowd was jumping up and down. Screaming like maniacs. WE HAD WON! I HAD WON IT FOR US!!! I had never felt to happy in my life! I then burst onto the floor crying. Everyone on my team ran over to me thinking that I was having a breakdown or something, but no. It was something different. Tears of happiness. Tears of joy. Tears I had never shed before in my life. It felt wonderful, but then so different! I had always cried of shame, or pain. Never because I was… happy! And that, my  friends, was the highlight of my day. Hope you enjoyed! I’m so glad it’s the weekend! Today Leo came home early in the afternoon and brought me a special lunch. And then he picked up Rio and me after school so I could go home and get ready and dressed up in my uniform for the game. Now, I am going to go cuddle up with Leo on the couch and we are going to watch our favorite show together! Tata for now!
Love,

Leah Chine

P.S. Sorry this post was so long… over 1000 words… wow! I just had a lot to say. I hope you enjoyed!

Dear Diary,

I have now planned to have a highlight of everyday from now on and tell somebody about it before I go to bed! Now, this highlight of the day, which I am going to write down, everyday my calendar, can be good or bad. And today’s isn’t looking so great… Let me tell you all about it! So, everyday after lunch, I have Language Arts Class. And my teacher, Ms. Watley, made a rule that starting yesterday, we had to bring our books to class everyday! Well, I have a zipped up binder, and my book was zipped up inside, and when I got to the classroom door, Ms. Watley put her foot up to block me from entering the room and asked if I had my book. Of course I tried to explain to her that it was zipped up in my binder and I would show her in the classroom, but no! I had to bend down on the nasty, dirty, unsanitary floor, unzip my binder, and get out my book. Well, I thought I would be down and up quickly, but my binder zipper got stuck! And while I was trying to get my binder zipper down, the late bell rang, and when I finally got the zipper all the down and taken the book out, I was late for class! When I stepped into the room, Ms. Watley had this mean look on her face that said “you’re late, I don’t like you.” So I walked up to her and showed her that I had my book and she said that I was being a nuisance and asked me to go sit down and she took 5 points off of my grade! And she decided to announce my annoyance to the class! I almost started to cry, but I was able to hold it in. I couldn’t wait for volleyball practice earlier tonight. And on the upside, volleyball was really fun! We were separated into two teams and we had a sort of tournament type thing. We played best 3-5 games and my team won. And while we did a victory dance, the other team had to run 6 laps and do 30 push ups. I guess thats not that hard, well not for me anyway, but they deserved it because we crushed them! I am also proud to say that I scored 13 out of the 25 points in the first game, 16 out of 25 in the second game, and an amazing 19 out of 25 in the third game. I was so happy! I really surprised the assistant coach who doesn’t think that I should be on a high school volleyball team when I’m 8 years old, but I proved that old lady wrong! I guess you could say that I’m a natural at this sport… not trying to brag, though. I hate people who brag at how great they are at stuff. So, I may not have mentioned before, but Rio was dating hers and my step-brother, Steve. And Steve broke up with her yesterday, or maybe today, I don’t remember. But she has now met this boy names Alex… I think. And I think that he really likes her, and she really like him. And they’re going to this high school dance thing together but just as “friends.” I really hope they start going out because I would really like to see the way Steve acts when he’s jealous, and Alex is really nice and they are perfect for each other. You may be wondering how I think he’s so nice… right? Well, yesterday, I went to the market after school to get an Odwala smoothie and a chocolate chip cookie, and I didn’t realize that they had bumped up the prices for a cookie, and I didn’t have enough, and Alex paid the dollar I needed and it was so sweet! And, the cookie was really good! Well, I gotta go to bed now. I’ll try to get on tomorrow but if I can’t, I’ll try again! I want to be on as much as I can! Tata for now!

Love,

Leah Chine

Here's the picture of me with my new haircut. It's hard to see because we were at a bad angle.

Dear Diary,

So sorry I haven’t posted in like, three months! I’ve been super busy with school and stuff! I’ll try to get on every weekend I can. It turns out that volleyball is a year-round sport if you choose to do it, and I did, so now my schedule is very booked! But, guess what? I got the spot as the libero for my volleyball team! The libero is a defensive specialist which means I can only play in the back row… which is fine by me because I’m to small to spike the ball over the net in the front row, even though I’ve gotten my over hand serve over, hmmm… Anyway! HAPPY HALLOWEEN! After Rio and Allena got the Halloween decorations out of the one closet we have, I secretly organized it with Oliver… shhh! Don’t tell anybody but, I LOVE TO CLEAN! I’m probably the neatest person in the house! Anyway, back to Halloween. Did you know that “Halloween” has to be capitalized or it’s spelled wrong??? I found that very weird! So, for Halloween, I was a fairy that descended from cats! Meow… I had kitty ears and a kitty tail and I also had the usual fairy stuff. I got mixed results of what I was from the people I trick or treated from:

• Fairy
• Bunny, cat-looking fairy
• Angel
• Bunny
• Cat
• Angel of Goodness

All of which were completely wrong! Especially the “Angel of Goodness!” I mean, really! I didn’t have a halo! Some people just don’t know a thing! But, it was a very interesting costume… I must admit. Just ask Rio or Allena. They will tell you.

After we got back from trick or treating, Rio and Allena went straight to eating their candy, but I sorted mine and organized it, and I counted it! I got 281 pieces of candy. That’s my new record from the last record of 10! What? I was a very easily frightened child once upon a time! But this year, I was determined to stay out all night, or, at least until everyone else went inside! And I completed that task, but, on the down side, my favorite baby tooth came out after eating a Hershey’s bar with almonds. It was one hard almond. But, the tooth had to come out some day so… that day was today… well, two days ago! So, after going trick or treating, and sorting my candy, and then loosing my tooth, I went to bed after having a major sugar rush off of a pixie stick! I was literally bouncing of the walls! When I woke up yesterday morning, THERE WAS MONEY UNDER MY PILLOW! Five buckaroos! I felt like the Queen of England! I’ve been learning about her in Social Studies! Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you! We aren’t in North Carolina anymore. The police kinda kicked us out after realizing we’ve been living there for so long, well, it was only about a week, maybe two… so know I’m back in Norfolk with my big, happy, family! So, when we got back, I continued to go to school, now legally, and then Halloween came. And that was where my story started! Sorry I had so much to tell you, but you deserved to know everything since last time I wrote to you. I gotta go, Rio and Allena and everyone else are waking up and I have to think up some excuse to why there is a pile of toilet paper in the middle of the lawn… lets just say, sugar does wonders to my digestive system!

Love,

Leah Chine

P.S. This is a picture of me with the new haircut I got for my birthday! It’s hard to tell how short it is because the camera, or me, was at a bad angle so… ENJOY!

Dear Diary,

Now that we have the papers, I get to go back to school! I think I’m going to join the math team. It sounds fun. But my teacher, Ms. Watley, is the leader. She isn’t the best lady… notice I underlined “Ms.” She isn’t marries… Well, maybe that’s her own fault, like, maybe she doesn’t want to get married, or maybe she has a boyfriend; she’s quite pretty! As I mentioned before, we found all the papers so now we just have to bring them in on Monday and the office workers will put them in my file. Can you believe it! I have my own personal file! But, while we were going over the papers before we left the house in North Carolina, I found a picture of me as a baby. I wanted to share it with you (look below). Sorry, I don’t have much else to say, but I might have a lot of homework so I might not post until Friday, but when I do, there will be plenty to read because I will tell you all about my week! Tata for now!

Love,

Leah Chine

This is me when I was around 1. I was looking away when mom took it.