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[babyk22]

My First Haunted House(13th floors)

      My boyfriend Zack called me a week before Halloween and ask did I want to attend a place called 13th Floors. I was wondering what the 13th floors were, he told me it’s a haunted house. I have never been to a haunted house before, so I was a bit skeptical before agreeing. After I went on the website and viewed how the event would look, I agreed to go. When we got there, we got in line and waited to get in. As we were waiting, some of the people that are apart of the haunted house were dressed up and came in line to scare the people that were waiting. I was one of those people who got scared because this man dressed as a zombie literally popped out of nowhere. As we got closer to the front, I started to get nervous because I could hear people screams who went inside. I washed those feeling because I wasn’t just going to waste my $33 dollars I spent on the ticket.          Walking in the building we walked over to this room where you take photos with some of the members so me and Zack took a picture with this guy dressed like the boogie man and another guy dress as an evil monkey with cymbals. The evil money man was whispering creepy things in my ear like “He’s going to get you”. After taking the photo they gave us this ticket so we would see our pictures at the end. Leaving the photo station, we got into another line and waited. When we made it to the front we had to wait for instructions. We were in groups of six and there were three rules: we couldn’t record, we had to keep moving and we couldn’t run. Walking in I didn’t know what to expect it because it was dark. The lights started flashing and people started jumping out of everything, windows, doors, closets, etc. I was so frightened that I was grabbing this guys shirt who was in front of me the whole time. I kept apologizing because I knew I stretched it. He said it was fine though. We went through this maze of crazy scenes like bloodbaths, hospitals, zombie apocalypses, anything you could think of. After about 20 minutes we made it out. I was sweating and relieved that it was over until the main said “your half way there”. I looked at Zack like are you serious?              We got into another line and waited at the next building. Once we made it to the door, we got into groups of four. We were walking in and the roof came down, we crawled into tunnels, we went into this virtual water scene to where it looked as if we were walking in a green swamp and people kept popping out of the water. We got lost and were bumping into things. When we got off the virtual swamp, we pass this bridge where it was an illusion around us and the bridge was moving to where we had to hold on the railing, so we wouldn’t fall. After that since we found the exit and end up walking into a gift shop. We sat down to regain out composer from the madness of the haunted house. Me and Zack used the ticket from the photo room and saw our picture. He bought it and I will say it was worth every penny.

[babyk22]

My Vietnamese Experience

    My boyfriend and I were driving around trying to find somewhere to eat on Saturday night. We like to try different cuisine, so this was an easy blog to do. I have seen a lot of different places like Jamaican restaurants, Japanese cooking, Mexicans places. I always wanted to try Vietnamese cooking. I like eating noodles and when I watch food network the judges make Vietnamese food sound so good. So, we found a restaurant called Pho 99 Vietnamese Grill.

      Before we walked in, we checked the reviews to make sure we're getting authentic Vietnamese cooking. The reviews were good, so we agreed to eat there. Walking in the restaurant it seemed welcoming. We sat down and looked over the menu. I really didn’t understand what the menu was saying because the words were in Vietnamese. After looking over the menu we decided to try an appetizer called crispy spring rolls and a summer roll with shrimp. The description of the crispy spring roll seemed like an egg roll and I love egg rolls. The description of the summer roll sounded interesting because I never heard of it before. The ingredients of the crispy spring roll consisted of a crispy golden rice paper wrapped around a mixed ground chicken, pork, shrimp, carrot, taro, clean noodles served with house special fish sauce. The ingredients of the summer roll consisted of softened rice paper wrapped around shrimp, pork, vermicelli noodle, green leaf, cucumber, mint leaves, chives, served w/ peanut sauce. I enjoyed the crispy roll more than the summer roll. The summer roll rice paper was tough, and the shrimp tasted fake. 

      After eating our appetizer, we choose what we wanted to eat for our entrée. I like the Pho 99 Special Beef Soup, so I ordered it with hot chili sauce on the side. This is the most popular soup of Vietnam. The Pho 99 Soup consists of long-simmering beef broth served over rice noodles. It comes with varieties of toppings that include, rare beef, beef flank, brisket, soft tendon, beef tripe, well-done, and meatball. When you are eating Pho, Pho can be garnished with lime wedge, sliced jalapeno, leaf herbs, Thai basil, bean sprouts, green onion, sliced onion, cilantro, hot chili sauce and hoisin sauce. After mixing my soup and tasting it, I started shaking a lot of salt in my dish. The funny part of it was that my boyfriend looked at me crazy and he said, “you’re going to make it taste salty.” I looked at him and stirred my soup around again and let him taste it. He looked at me and said, “yeah, you need some more salt.” I enjoyed the noodles from the dish and I really liked the beef on my boyfriend’s plate, I kept stealing meat off his plate.

       After finishing our meals, the waitress gave him the check with these mini gum on it which were cool. My flavor was lavender, and his flavor was mint. My gum tasted a little funny, I think it's because I never have had a flower-scented piece of gum before. My overall experience was okay, I would probably try a different Vietnamese restaurant in the future.

[babyk22]

My Culture Inside and Out

When thinking about my culture it reminds me of how I was raised by my beliefs, education, tradition, Era, and ethnicity. My family is very religious so I would have to go to church every Wednesday and Sunday. My families’ first and only language is English, most of them have taken different languages as a class but not as a living. I like to read different types of books like mysteries, suspense, and comedy. My favorite genre to read is urban books with authors like Carl Weber, Zane, and Chunichi.

My family values education very highly, especially My parents who urged me to pursue a college education because they themselves were unable to finish and couldn’t afford to go. I view school as a choice because you don’t necessarily have to go to college to pursue your career it just depends on what route you want to go.  My family ethnicity is black, but my dad claims my ancestors are Indian from the “Black Foot Tribe”. My grandmother was born outside of Macon, Georgia, so her dad used to kill cows and chickens and fry them up. That how my grandma cooks, not the killing animals’ part but making a lot of what people call “soul food”. For example, fried chicken, collard greens, corn bread, macaroni and cheese, etc. 

I grew up in the early 2000’s fashion trends were a lot different than it is today. I remember when I was younger I would wear K-Swiss, FUBU, Baby Phat, Roca wear, Dereon, etc.  On the first day of school everybody had an all-white pair of K-Swiss, but now everybody wants to wear Nike, Jordan, Adidas, Pumas, Gucci, Polo, etc.

Tradition is important in my family, we celebrate most of the national holidays. For New year’s we watch the ball drop and drink sparkling wine because I’m not of age to drink alcohol and my grandma makes a big dinner for all my family. For Easter, we would go to church and give kids Easter baskets then play games with everybody. For the Fourth of July, My grandmother grills ribs, chicken, hot dogs and makes baked beans. Then we set up fireworks, once we run out we take a trip to the landing to see bigger fireworks then we play board games for the rest of the day.  For Halloween we trick or treat in the neighborhood, sometimes we go to different peoples Halloween parties that we’ve been invited us to. For Thanksgiving, My family spends most of the day cooking. I and my grandmother wake up early to start cooking the ham and the sides that were going to eat for that day, my sister and my cousin come in later than us, but we all get the job done. For Christmas we start a little early, we normally open at least one present on Christmas eve and then we open the rest of the gifts on Christmas day. My grandma makes a big dinner on that day as well.

Culture is such a diverse word that can have multiple meanings. My culture is described as how I was brought up and the variety of knowledge I gain from my family. The beliefs I have and my religion, education, the traditions I have, the era I was born in and my race. My culture is the very essence of my personality, my goals and my passions in life, my culture is me.