Here's a traffic jam outside my hotel window in Bangkok...  There weren't many traffic lights.

Of course, part of the program involved seeing damage from the 2004 Tsunami.

This is the home that I stayed in for two weeks with my host family.

Yellow is the color of the Thai monarchy, so my host family and I are all wearing yellow shirts in this photo outside of their house.

The first bit of information I received about the people I would be living with for two weeks informed me that they were a Buddhist, three-person family living in Krabi.  Of course, I had no idea what they would be like until I met them.

My host brother, nicknamed Tour (because he likes to travel), spoke English well.  My host father was a sailor and knew many English words and phrases; by the time I left I spoke about as much Thai as he did English.  My host mother spoke no English at all but was extremely kind and thoughtful, so the desire to communicate with her motivated me to learn a lot of Thai.  She worked at a shop they owned in the market.

As you can see in the pictures, their home was a small, one-floor, concrete building.  When I entered their home for the first time, my host father walked over to the middle of their living room and exclaimed “OWN TV!” as he gestured to their ten-inch screen.  We had no air conditioning, but they possessed one fan and insisted that I use it.  The family owned one blue Honda motorcycle, which sometimes presented problems because we could only travel places two people at a time.  At night, they would park the motorcycle in the living room.

Thais are very clean people.  They bathe at least twice a day.  Along with that, they also believe that dirty things should be separate from clean things-- thus, instead of one bathroom, there is a bathroom for bathing, and a toilet room for obvious purposes.  The bathroom had both a Thai bath (basin of water from which you scoop water out and pour onto yourself) and a showerhead.  There was no hot water and unreliable cold water (there were a couple nights when nothing would come out of the shower).  The toilet room, of course, contained a squat toilet (along with being clean people, Thais believe it is unsanitary for everyone to be sitting on the same toilet seat, which makes sense).

There were no extra bedrooms, but my host father had cleverly created an area for me in the corner of the living room by moving two shelves.  At night, the whole family slept under mosquito nets.  The house was very open to nature—full of bugs, lizards, and spiders (some of them venomous).  Every once in a while we would find a huge swarm of ants somewhere and have to sweep them outside with a broom.  Often these swarms would appear inside the refrigerator, which my family usually used for general storage (they had no cabinets) and only plugged in when they had food to keep cool.

We ate at home almost every night—delicious homemade Thai food.  Our meals were very fun and friendly, and the whole family always ate together.  Even with the language barrier, I remember our meals being full of interesting conversation.  They would encourage me to have more of things, put bits of food on my plate, and not be satisfied until I had at least three helpings of rice.

 I greatly enjoyed the time I got to spend with my host family.  They welcomed me into their home so generously and, although they did not have much, shared with me everything they could offer.  Life with my host family was so interesting, relaxing, and fun that it was hard to return to America.  I learned from them a whole new way of thinking, living, and looking at the world.  Most importantly, they taught me that there are similarities among people everywhere.  Even Thais think that their food is spicy, the weather is hot, and the mosquitoes are aggravating.  Before we parted, my host mother told me never to forget that I have a family in Thailand, and I know that I never will.

Every Saturday morning, all the students at my host-brother's school would come to donate food to the Buddhist monks.

Group mentality is strongly encouraged.  Everyone has to wear school uniforms and cut their hair the same way.

The beaches were amazing... such warm water, fine sand, and nice waves.

We had a beach party on the last night with our host families.

Tour and I

We had so much delicious fruit.  Some of it, like the fruit pictured here, can't be found in the US.  There was a lot of other stuff too though.  Behind their house, my family had coconuts, bananas, and papayas growing.  I ate a lot of pineapple too.  All of the fruit was extremely cheap.  In fact, everything was.... I would never expect to pay more than a dollar or two for a complete meal at a restaurant.

The area that we were in had a high Muslim population.

Here's most of our group of Americans.

A monk and I... this picture was in the Boston Globe

One temple I went to had soo many monkeys running all over the place.

That's about all the Thailand stuff I have to share right now.  It was such an amazing trip though and what you see here doesn't nearly do it justice.  I experienced so much in such relatively short period of time.  I'll be doing several presentations at Hudson High this year (Rachel Belanger also came and will present with me for some of them) so many of you will get to see more.  Feel free to IM me with any questions.

About a week after I came home, I spent a while on Cape cod, first with Long's family and then with my Dad.  Long and I bought some insanely cool sunglasses and bandanas.  Which way is the beach?

THAT way.

I also did two oil paintings while I was there, my second and third ever.  (My first, when I was eleven, is pictured below somewhere).

The salt marsh behind the house we stayed in

A scene from the beach one night

I've been enjoying the past few days at home but have been so busy.  Tomorrow morning I'm leaving again; I'll be in NY for the next 10 days or so.

Let's see...  Math league has been pretty good.  We placed third at the Massachusetts state meet this year, the first time Hudson has done so in twenty years.  We'll be going to the New England meet in a few days.

School has been so busy this year.  I'm taking four AP classes so it's been a ton of work; way more than any other year.  Next year I'm going to do five though so that'll be a lot too.  It'll be worth it though since then I'll have taken 10 by the time I graduate.  I went to tour WPI a few days ago and realized that if I do well on all these I will have enough credit to graduate a year early from there.  I'll definitely apply to WPI as my safety school but Harvard or MIT would be good.

I've had soo many people comment about the etch-a-sketch pictures I drew.  Sorry I don't have any more; I don't even know where my sisters' etch-a-sketch is... probably up in one of their rooms somewhere.  In the past five months though I did manage to find time to do a drawing and a painting so I'll put them up.

That's not from a picture or anything; I just drew that from my head.  This watercolor though is of a photograph I took last summer.

Many of you at HHS remember the speeches and stuff I made at the beginning of the year.  Most people know what that was for but some only have just a general idea...  I've had people ask me if I won that election for "congress" or "school president" or "that thing you were running for".  Even now half a year later people still ask me once in a while when they buy candy from me.  Oh and to answer other FAQs about candy, the money goes to math league, sales are good, and I don't know exactly how much we've made.  Anyways, it's been pretty fun being the Hudson School Committee student representative.  Here's a picture of me making a funny gesture.  I was explaining something to them I think but I don't recall what.  I'm sure it made sense in context.

I love my Mr. Knoblock nameplate.  Ok that's about it for tonight.

11-27-2005-  Oh man, I think more and more time lapses between each update I make here.  I guess my life just keeps getting busier.  Well, this one will have to cover everything that happened at the end of the summer and the beginning of the school year up until thanksgiving.  It'll probably be a long one.

To start out, I went camping with my dad.  Not like park-our-car-at-the-campsite-and-set-up-the-tent type of camping.  Real camping.  We packed all of our gear into 40-pound backpacks and hiked up the tallest mountain in the northeast.  We started out at an altitude of about 800 feet or so and hiked up to about 3500 feet and spent the night there.  The next day, we hiked to the top of Mount Washington, over 6000 feet high.  We came back down, stayed another night, hiked back to the bottom and went home.  It was a good weekend.  Here is a picture of my dad and I near the top.

I went to Cape Cod for a week towards the end of the summer.  At the beach one night there was quite a magnificent sunset.  This picture looks so fake, like I was photoshopped into it.

I also had many great times with Kristen towards the end of the summer!  Here is a picture of us one day when we went for a hike:

Another day, Long and I were in his kitchen.  I think we were making some yummy Asian tea or something.  Well anyways, he was squeezing a lime and all of a sudden yelled "Ahhh I got lime in my eye!" and at the time my camera happened to be in my pocket.  How much better could things get...

I want to mention that Sam Karachi is working on his first album.  He's quite an amazing pianist and a great composer too.  His music is very original and catchy.  Be sure to ask him about it!  krotch128  I took this picture of him one day as he rode by on his bike in my driveway, back when he had short hair.

I also want to mention Pat.  He can squeeze balls really tight.

I ended the last entry with a picture I drew on my little sister's Etch-A-Sketch.  Well, after I drew that one picture people starting asking me if I could draw other things, like people.  I didn't know, so I gave it a try.  I suppose I can.  At the request of Long Phan, I present Etch-A-Sketch Hitler!

Usually I just draw in pen or pencil.  I did an oil painting though one time when I was 11.  It's hanging on a wall at my grandparents house in New York.  I took a picture of it while I was there this summer.  It was my first and last oil painting.  Well, maybe I'll paint again some day but probably not soon since it takes a while.  My painting took an afternoon.

I guess it's pretty decent for an 11-year-old who had never touched paints before, but it is funny to see what my handwriting looked like at the time.  Here is a close-up of my signature on the painting.

I'll throw in here too a sketch that I did of the view off of my grandparent's deck.

Well that pretty much takes care of the summer.  School has been going well.  I started out the year taking Spanish 4, AP Calculus, Honors Chemistry 1, and AP American studies.  But after two weeks or so of school my chem teacher switched Long and I into AP Chemistry, which I am liking much better.  So now Long and I are the first students at Hudson High to take AP Chem without ever taking any Chemistry before.

Math league is good...  I got a perfect 18 at our first meet this year.  We'll have another meet December 7th.  I hope to do as well.  Pretty much everyone in school who doesn't know my name knows me as the Candy Man now because of my candy sales to support math league.  As for track, the first day of the season is tomorrow, so that'll be taking up more time I don't have.

One day after school Long and I were doing homework in a classroom when the curriculum coordinator for English and social studies came in and asked us if he could sit down for a few minutes and sort some papers.  We asked him what he was doing and it turns out he was getting ready to give a quick speech in a few minutes to introduce Sergei Kruschev, the son of the Prime Minister of the USSR during the Cuban Missile Crises!  That's right, this guy actually came to HHS.  I was surprised I hadn't heard anything about it.  I don't think it was really publicized at all; there were only about 30 people there to hear him speak.  Of course Long and I went.  We got a picture of us with him, which is kind of a funny picture because we did not know about the event and therefore just had on typical teenager school clothing, while Mr. Kruschev is in a suit.

I asked Long the other day about what he had for thanksgiving dinner.  He told me that his family made turkey and ham.  I was pretty surprised that they made ham, so I asked him about it.  He was like "What, doesn't everybody make ham on thanksgiving!?"  And he was serious.  Hahaha...  But really, how would an immigrant's family know that Americans only make turkey on thanksgiving.  It's still amusing to think about though.  They also didn't learn until last year about the little hooks used to hang ornaments on Christmas trees; they had always just tried to hang the ornaments by the little wire circles on top of them.  Gotta at least give them credit for trying to celebrate Christmas though :-)

I was looking at an old menu of a local Chinese restaurant the other day.  It says "Open 7 Days A Week", blah blah blah... but then it says "We Delivery"!

Someone probably told them that it was incorrect English, so they changed it to say "We Deliver"

Much better.  But they also changed their schedule: they're still open 7 days a week, except now on Mondays they're closed.

This did end up being a pretty long post.

7-16-2005-  Well, since the last update here, school has ended, I went to a leadership conference, spent a week in Florida, and have been hanging out back home now.  I'm waiting for results from AP tests, SATs, MCAS, and my class schedule for next year to come in the mail.  Report cards were already sent home.  My pre-calc teacher commented that I "need to pay attention in class" haha although I don't think my average ever went below a 98 or so.  I suppose I did tend to fall asleep in that class quite a bit though.

As always, the last few weeks of school were a lot of fun.  It was basically just taking finals and then chillaxing.  In environmental science, Long Phan made himself a friend: another Asian!

One of my favorite classes this year was programming Java.  Not only did I learn Java, but we also had so much free time in that class.  The teacher would always let people who understood what we were learning (there were a few of us) go off and do whatever.  Usually I would work on my own programs for fun, but when I need a break from programming we had many a good stroll around the school.  Here's a picture of me lying on... that's right, count 'em: ten chairs.

On the eve of the last day of school, Long Phan, Sammy Karachi, and I got together around 10PM and began what came to be known by us as "The Expedition".  We left my house and spent the entire night out walking around town.  It was such a great time.

We walked to Trish Dao-Tran's house and showed up there around midnight... Stopped by Long's house a couple times...  Ate breakfast at McDonalds in the morning.  We then walked to school for our final day.  School was only three hours.  After that we went out to lunch with some people, played a game of ultimate frisbee, went swimming, and went to some parties in the evening.  I slept well that night after being up for like 40 hours.  The beginning of our summer vacation was quite good.

The weekend after school ended, I went to this leadership conference that the school wanted me to go to.  I really had no idea what it was other than "a leadership conference" before I actually went there, but it was pretty cool.  It was basically like a camp, and we just did fun activities and such.  It was funny though... the people who pick kids to go there are so racist.  There were about 140 kids there who were selected because of "leadership qualities", and I think 2 of them were black, and 3 Asian.  One of the Asians was a math league kid, and one looked quite a bit like Long, including the spikey hair, glasses, and watch:

It's such an amazing resemblance; I kept thinking that I was seeing him out of the corner of my eye!  And then there was a Vietnamese girl there too who was pretty cool... she grew up in Vietnam and came to America.

Right after coming back, I spent an awesome week in Orlando with Long, his mom, and his sister.  We did so much. We went to Epcot, MGM, Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, three days of Universal, Seaworld, the ocean, and still managed to have time for a few afternoons at the huge hotel pool.  It was my first trip to Florida and I enjoyed it a lot.

Here's a picture that Long took on the way down there...  So, there's an emergency and you open the door to get off the plane.  Well, if you open the door to find solid flames, do not exit!  No salga!

The weather was pretty nice all week.  It was in the 80's and 90's, and relatively humid.  Every day, it was perfect in the morning, and then around 1PM it would get all dark and cloudy and it would rain, but then an hour or so later it would totally clear up and be a beautiful day again.  Here's Long and I about to go on Revenge of the Mummy.  It was hot that day.

Here's a sign from another ride... You can sit and hold hands, but NO partying on the ride.

I took this picture looking through the peep-hole in the hotel room door.  I thought it was cool.  Long esta hablando por telephono.

Well, it was a great trip.  We came home on the fourth of July, but we saw plenty of fireworks that week.

A few days ago, I was walking over to Longs house to help his sister with some computer thing.  I got there and noticed a sign on the door that I believe was intended for me... I thought it was pretty funny:

I didn't do much today other than clean my room...  it was in pretty bad shape.  I removed 25 lbs of paper (yes that's right, I weighed it).  Yesterday was good though... hung out here with O'Connell, Long Phan, and Karachi.

And now, I shall leave you with a picture I drew on my little sister's Etch-A-Sketch.  I remember playing with mine when I was young.  I drew... lines and squares and stuff...  And then I went like 10 years without touching one, and then yesterday I drew this:

jk, I didn't actually dye my hair... But if I did it would look something like that.

So, what has happened since January...  Well, my computer died with an amazing combined hard drive crash, power supply failure, and video card fry.  It took me a few weeks to get that one worked out, but once I figured out all the problems and got new parts, my system is a whole lot better than it was.  400 watt power supply, 160 gb hard drive, and a ge-force 6600 video card.  Life is good.  But anyways, that delayed updates for a while.

Track was fun.  Another great spring season.  We were league champs.  Towards the end of the season I started running the 400m, which I really like.  My time dropped by 5 seconds in like two weeks, and didn't level off by the end of the season.  I can't wait to run it next year when I get some spikes.

Math league was good too.  We finished 6th in the league (division A).  Also, apparently I get to have my name on a plaque in the hhs library for getting the school's top score on the AMC 10 (this national test thing).  Pretty sweet.  I just got back yesterday at 5 AM from the annual American Regional Mathematics League (ARML) competition at Penn State University.  It's this national competition with over 1000 kids from around the country (and a few teams from other countries).  I was on the Western Mass team.  We got sixth place out of 65 teams in division B.  It was a great trip.  I got to miss school for half of last week for it.  We went to Hershey Park on Friday, and although a little rainy, it was still very fun.  Here's a pic of me looking like a math geek right before the competition.  Western Mass, yo.  Western Mass...

School has been going well. Only two more weeks left.  Qué bueno.  Well, I'll leave you for now with a fortune I got a few weeks ago.  It looks quite funny when you have your thumb over part of it, which is how I read it at first.

Second semester is almost over.  Classes are going well.  We are pretty much done with everything in Geometry.  I don't know what we'll do for the next month or so.  Probably nothing, like we've done for the past month.  Me and my group members, Long Phat, Sammy Quarashi, and Righ G made an awesome castle out of cardboard, complete with working cardboard cannons.  It dominated all the other projects.

Next semester Long needs to make a teacher think he doesn't speak any English.  That would be wicked funny.  He should do all the written work perfectly, but only speak in Vietnamese.  Haha....

Anyways, I'm going to leave you guys with some pictures of Sean Mayer drinking Gatorade and head off to Pat O'Connell's house.

8-24-2004-  Already this summer is coming to a close with less than two weeks left until school.  It has been a good one though, so at least it feels more or less complete.  Today, Long, Pat, and Sam came over.  We hung out for a while, and went swimming a couple times.  We also played around with Pat's scooter and Long's Skateboard.  I learned how to do an ollie.  Awesome.  Later, we played some GTA3.  It was a pretty fun day.

I've been working on my newest program, called Evolution.  It simulates life in a colony of bacteria, and shows how over time the cells will evolve when exposed to a selective predator.  It is about done, there are just a couple bugs I have to fix.  I also have to write all the little things where you put your mouse over something and a message pops up and tells you what control does.  I hope to have the finished version of Evolution online before school starts.  It's pretty fun to play around with.  The best part is though, that the results it gives strongly supports the theory of evolution.  Anyone who tries my program and still thinks the universe was created by god is stupid.

Well, school is starting before labor day this year... September 2.  Here is my schedule for this year:

5-1-2004-     I thought I'd give poetry a try...  Of course, I'd rather write about something I care about than just anything...  So below is a poem I wrote about religion.

My Thoughts On Religion
by Kyle Knoblock

Responsible for creating everything that exists,
An unseen being in control of our lives.
Capable any conceivable feat,
He watches his play-things with all-seeing eyes.

A quest to uncover how the universe works,
To gain knowledge through experimentation.
Everything is determined by precise laws of physics.
We advance our civilization.

Two distinct ways of life,
The old and the new.
They cannot coexist,
And now we must choose
Between science and religion,
The future and past.
Both ways are tempting,
But one will not last...

3-15-2004-     Today was the start of the spring sports season, as I'm sure everybody knows.  Today in track we didn't really do too much...  Just running and plyometrics and stuff like that...

     The highlight of the day however came while we were in the middle of the field doing our final stretching and getting ready to go inside.  This helicopter flew right over us and circled around the school.  Then, it hovered over the parking lot and started coming down.  In the parking lot, we noticed the flashing lights of an emergency response vehicle.  Sure enough, the helicopter landed right in our parking lot!  All the sand there when flying all over...  I don't think we need to hire street sweepers this year lol...  So that that's pretty much what I saw...  We all started to run over to see it but the coaches didn't want us to and we had to go inside for an "informational" talk.

     So they say we might be getting some more snow tomorrow night....  That's not good... It sounds like the timing is just off for a school delay or anything...

3-11-2004-     So, a lot has happened since I last updated here...  After another dead body was found in Hudson, MA, they are thinking that we might have a serial killer!  I put up a wallpaper (Killer) commemorating all this. haha...  Also, we have that debate about gay marriage going on in the U.S.  Gay marriage has never been done in America, and right now there are several cities allowing gay couples to get married.  There is a lot going on in congress and stuff and everyone is talking about it...  Personally, I think that it should be allowed.  They deserve the same rights as every other U.S. citizen.  There really isn't anything wrong with gay marriage either...

Well, in school, Spring Track is starting this Monday.  That will be fun... I'm going to run the 200 meter and throw javelin (awesome event).  Math league is done for the year.  Hudson came in 5 out of 22 schools competing.

Oh, and I thought I should list my favorite bands in here somewhere.  They are: NOFX and The Alkaline Trio.  I like all kinds of music, mostly punk and rap though.

2-18-2004-     Well, it's second semester in school.  My classes:

English - Ms. Brother
Civics - Mr. Otlin
Physics - Ms. Ross
Spanish 2-  Mr. Macedo
Art 1- Ms. Yates
Gym- Ms. Weed
Reading/Writing Workshop- Ms. McMaster