Google and Facebook Tour!! (Past Week)

      The past week of March 27, I went to school Monday through Thursday. There was really nothing big going on that week, except that I had a math test Friday, which I ended up skipping to have a day of Work Experience. I studied the whole week for my Math test Friday, but now I will take it Monday April 3rd. I was hoping to get my 'Career in Detail' project back the past Tuesday, but I did not get it. Monday, I handed in my Spanish project that I did over the weekend. I did it in a scrapbook, kind of the same way I did my 'Career in Detail' project. This is the front page of my Spanish Project.

I had about 10 Pages in my Project. I missed Friday because my Mom reminded me that I was going to go see Google at 10:00 AM, and then go see Facebook at 2:00 PM. I was happy I was going to go see Google and Facebook, and also that I could take the Math test on Monday. After next week, I go back to Grand Rapids!!!!!

Wednesday I had my Piano lesson, and I have a Piano recital on April 3rd which is this Sunday. It is at 4:00 PM, and I am playing one of the songs that I played for my Exams at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, and one of them is a jazz piece I learned just for fun. Thursday, Me and Alec studied for the Math test we had on Friday. Thursday night, I went to bed at 11:30 PM, so that I could wake up at 8:30 AM to get dressed, and then walk down to my moms work so she could walk me over to Google at 10:00 AM.

I got up at 8:30 AM, and I got dressed in some nice blue pants, and my 'Peru' shirt that I got from Grandma Nancy. I also brought a sweatshirt. I knew I did not have to wear my Uniform because Google and Facebook are very casual. I walked over to my Moms work at about 9:15 AM so that I could get there at 9:30 AM. Once I got to my moms work, we headed over to Google to be there a little before 10:00 AM. I went in, and signed in. I met somebody who took me around Google. I dont know what I am allowed to share, but I did not really hear anything Confidential or anything. Basically, they have a really nice place to work, very casual, and my guide who was talking me around said that most people who work at Google dont spend more than 2 hours a day at their desk, which was awesome. They have so many places you can go to work, there are hang out areas most places, and the views from the building are amazing.

They have 3 main buildings that are connected by a Skybridge, which is basically a bridge above the ground that you can use to walk from one of the 3 buildings to another one. It is used so that you do not have to go out of the actual building on the ground floor, then go in the next one. That was really awesome to see. I went and signed the 'Google' sign that they had by the Skybridge.

Me in front of the Google sign!!

I had lunch at Google also which was very good. They have very good food at Google, a ton of variety. I would probably never get sick of eating there each day, they have so much to choose from! Here is what I got for lunch at Google.

Google was amazing to look around and see, and now I want to work there! It sounds really fun. I got to learn a lot about things I was interested in, a lot about how they sell adds and stuff. After I was done at Google, I walked back over to my Moms work, and I had about an hour before 2:00 PM when I was suppose to go to Facebook. We hung out for about an hour, then we walked over to Facebook. I got a tour of Facebook. They had a lot of cool screens that could show statistics of people who used Facebook all over the world.  They also had a cool Lego wall that people could build on. 

Facebooks Lego wall!

Facebooks offices were more industrial, but I really liked them. 

After seeing Google and Facebook, I walked back home, and did my Piano. My Mom was having a party with her friends from work. They all came over around 6:00 PM, and by then, I had my Piano done and also the Trash. I am still saving up for my trip to Anaheim, California. I have saved up about $ 475 so far. I just need a little bit more. At 6:00 PM the party started, and I tried to make some cool snacks with chocolate and puff pastry in the oven. It did not work out so well.

I basically just took the puff pastry and wrapped it around the chocolate, and then waited for them to cook. They tasted OK at the end, but not amazing. People brought good food to the party, including good meat, salami and other things also like bread, olives, and chocolate. I had a lot of good food, and I played H1Z1 with my friends online. That was really fun and I was lucky I got to use my Moms phone because our wifi was not working at the moment. 

Tomorrow, we are going to wake up at 7:30 AM, because we have another day trip, but this time it is to Glendalough, and Kilkenny. We will have more time to freely walk around on this trip. It is from 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM. It will be fun, plus the bus is Air Conditioned and it has Wi-Fi also, which is cool. That will be a fun trip, then I have a recital Sunday at 4:00 PM. Then my Math test on Monday, then after that week, I fly home to Grand Rapids on Saturday!!!! I am really excited to hang out with Papa and go to Taco Bell and eat Hot Cheetos.

-March 31, 2017

-Jackson Glasser

Back to School, 3 day week!

     Wednesday, I had to go back to school. I woke up at 7:30 AM, and got my uniform on and went to school on the bus. Wednesdays are half days so I had my Piano lesson at 1:50 PM, so I would get home at about 3:30 PM, and I would have Piano done giving me more time to work on other things. I had my 4 main classes Wednesday. English, Math, History and Spanish. Then, I had 80 minutes of Physics and we talked about life on other planets and how the human race will be extinct within the next 100,000 years and all the usual stuff.

At 1:10 PM, we got out of school, and I walked over to the Music building to have my piano lesson at 1:50 PM. I had my piano lesson, and after that, I walked to the bus stop and went home. Once I got home, I did a lot of Spanish homework to prepare to do a Spanish project that is due Monday. 

Thursday I got up and went to school again. I was lucky that I had 2 substitute teachers today, one for my English class, and one for my Advanced Math class. I was glad I had my Advanced Math class free for 80 minutes so that I could work on my Spanish homework and other things. I got home tonight and Me, Levi and Oma walked down to Ginos Ice Cream right next to the St. Stevens Green Shopping Center. Me and Levi got ice-cream and Oma got a crepe. 

Tomorrow is Friday already. Since I got to skip Monday and Tuesday it feels like it is not Friday yet but it is. I get to wear my sports uniform tomorrow which is good. I still have not gotten my 'Career in Detail' project back yet. I really want to get it back to see what I got on it because I put a ton of work into it. Tonight I also did another chapter of Economics on-line. I have 8 chapters and I am finished with 3 of them. I can definitely finish Economics by May 20th. I am continuing to save money for Me and my Dads trip to California June 16-18th. That will be really fun!! I have about 420$ saved up so far. That covers the hotel, and now I just need for food and transportation from the LAX airport to Anaheim. 

-March 23, 2017

-Jackson Glasser

   

London Trip, Drake Concert, Museums!!

   

DAY #1 Tate Modern Art Museum and DRAKE CONCERT!!

  This Monday and Tuesday, I went to London with my brother Levi and my Mom. We flew out Monday and came back Tuesday, and we got to miss 2 days of school. It was super awesome. Monday, Levi woke up at 7:00 AM like always, and I got up at 8:00 AM. I packed my toothbrush and other things I did not pack over the weekend. I also took a shower right before we took off to the airport. We all said goodbye to Oma because she would be staying at the house while we were in London. We said goodbye, and got a cab to the Airport. Once we got to the Airport, we went to our gate and got on our Ryanair flight.

Our flight was 1 hour and 30 minutes long. Once we landed in London Gatwick Airport, we had to try to find a train to take us to London. We found the correct train that went from the Gatwick Airport to London, and we bought some tickets for Monday and Tuesday that would allow us to use all of the underground Tubes in London for those 2 days. We got to London, and the first place we went was Borough Market. We heard about it from a guy on the train and he told us there were a lot of places to buy food and we should go there to eat lunch, so we did! We got inside and it was starting to lightly rain, and it had a ton of little shops and huts where you could buy food. Here is what it looks like from the outside.

Me and Levi went to this one place and got BBQ Chicken wraps and they were delicious! My Mom went somewhere else. The place we went had huge pans cooking chicken and rice for the salads or wraps.

This is where Me and Levi went to eat!

This is what my mom got to eat!

After we ate, my Mom had to get on a call at 3:00 PM that she needed to be on. We stayed in the building for a while since it was raining. At about 3:30 PM, we decided to walk about 10 minutes to a nearby modern art museum. It was called 'Tate Modern' and it had a ton of Modern Art, and the museum was free also! Here is us standing infront of it. 

Me and Levi standing infront of the Tate Modern museum for Modern Art

The outside of the building looked really cool!

We went inside and went to the 4th floor to start off. My Mom was still on her phone call so we just walked around and looked at the rooms with modern art in them. Modern art is really weird because its just anything you can think of that is weird, some of it is really creative, and some of it is just very interesting and makes you think, who would think to make this. Here are some pictures of the Modern Art that we saw in 'Tate Modern'.

This appears to be a perfect square of wood and trash, I thought it was interesting. 

As you can see, very interesting things. But it was fun, and we looked around more and my Mom got off of her call and we enjoyed the rest of the 'Tate Modern' museum. After we were finished looking around inside of the museum, we exited and started to walk to the nearest underground station to get the Tube to our room we had for the night. We went and found our place, we put in the gate code. The room we had was like in one of those houses that multiple people lived in but we had our own room that had a kitchen in it. It was not that nice, but it had 2 bunkbeds which were pretty good. Once we got settled in our room it was about 5:10 PM. 

We waited around until about 6:15 PM when we started to walk back to the same station that we got here on, to get to the O2 Theater to see Drake! We only had to go one stop on the tube to West Greenwich, then we could get off and walk to the O2. Thats what we did, we took the escalator up and walked to the O2, pretty much right there. Here is us infront of the O2 Arena!

Once we got inside of the O2 Arena, we walked around and looked at what there was in the hallways. They were selling Drake shirts so I ofcourse had to get one. I chose my favorite, and it had his picture on the front. We walked around and Levi wanted Cotton Candy so we got some of that, and we found our seats. We had pretty good seats, it was closer than the seats high up and behind us. The O2 Arena has about 20,000 Seats, and there were 17,000 people at the Drake concert that night. Here is us at our seats at about 6:40 PM. 

Here is the awesome shirt that my Mom bought for me. 

My Drake shirt that my Mom bought for me. 

It has the locations of his 'Boy Meets World' tour on the back. 

Here are some of the warm up songs that the DJ played for us before Drake came out on the stage to perform.

Around 9:30 PM, Drake finally came out to perform. He came out and he had like fire in the background and the set was amazing! His set on stage had a ton of programmable balloons that could go up and down. At the end he also brought in his huge inflatable ball that looked like the sun from the 4 projectors shining on it. 

These are the balloons that can go up and down and be programmed to make cool effects to his songs!

Drakes inflatable ball.

Amazing Set!

The concert was amazing, and he brought out a ton of famous people. He brought out Trey Songz, and also Nicki Minaj!!

Nicki Minaj!

Drake was on stage for probably 2 hours and 30 minutes. It was amazing! Here are some more videos of the concert when Drake was performing.

Here is Hotline Bling by Drake, it really demonstrates the awesome balloons that he had at the concert and how they moved. 

After the concert, we exited and tried to get to the Tube quickly so that we could go to our room. Luckily we were there and there were not to many people there, and we got on straight away and got home quick and went straight to bed. Tuesday we were going to go to the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum in London. 

DAY #2 TUESDAY - Natural History and Science Museum!!

Tuesday was Day #2 of the London Trip. We were going to go to the Natural History Museum and Science Museum in London, which are right next to each other so that helped the travel time. We woke up and got out of our room, and took the tube to the stop where we could see the 2 museums. We got off, and walked underground and came up where the museums were, and luckily enough, there was a very good place to eat right before we went to the Natural History Museum.

The place we went to eat was called "Le Pain Quotidien" and it had really good food. Me and Mama each got the Avocado on toast and scrambled eggs, and Levi and I also got a Belgian Waffle. They were delicious!!

After we finished eating, we walked over to the Natural History Museum of London. The entrance was a huge escalator that led through this awesome huge metal sphere. 

The museum had a lot about the earth, and history. It had a lot about volcanoes, tectonic plates, tsunamis, and also earthquakes. There was even a room in which people could stand in and it would re-enact what it would be like to be inside of a store as an earthquake was happening! Check it out!

Here are the pictures I got inside of the Natural History Museum. 

This is talking about the different ways earths crust can interact with each-other. 

This is the timeline that shows the first life on Earth as we know it. It shows different important things in the 500 million timeline that has life, including the dinosaurs going extinct. They had a whole section on the timeline of our life on Earth. 

The Natural History Museum also had a lot about Human Evolution, and it showed our skeleton compared to an ape's. 

A skeleton of an Ape

The Museum also had a ton of different kind of cool rocks, and minerals. They had a whole section on rocks and gems. 

They even had a rock that contained Uranium. It was real uranium also, and was really radioactive, and the only thing keeping us safe is the lead box that it is trapped inside of. 

The Museum also had a whole section on time, and they had a lot of clocks.

They had cool old planes and trains also. 

After we were done seeing everything inside of the Natural History Museum, we headed over to the Science Museum which was also free. We heard from my Mom that there were a lot of robots in this museum, which excited Levi and I. 

The first thing that Me, My Mom and Levi did when we got into the Science Museum was to go see a 40 minute movie in their IMAX theater about the Earth. We got popcorn before we went into their theater. 

Me, Mama and Levi sitting in the Science Museums IMAX Theater. 

 It was narrated by Jennifer Lawrence, and it talked about our earth, and showed a crew in space working. People in space have to work out 2 and a half hours a day because they dont get any excercise moving and it makes your bones weaker. They showed what they had to do and how they stayed up there for 6 months. They got supply drops from Space-X Capsules and other things that had food for them. Jennifer Lawrence discussed Global Warming and it was a very good short movie.

After we saw the movie, we went to check out the simulators. There were 2 simulators. One was where you sat on a bench and it flew you on a flight with the royal air force. The other one was called Fly 360 and you could actually take control of an Air Plane and fly it around in a simulator. That was the one that Levi and I were most excited about. I have done something like this before, it mirrors how you turn so if you go upsi-down, so does the pod that you are inside of. 

This is the pod that you get into to fly the plane. 

Me and Levi getting ready to fly a fighter jet.

After we went in the simulators, we went to check out the robots. The robots there were crazy. They had all different types of robots that were built in different parts of the world, and in different times. Some of them could scan your body and even talk to you!! Here are some pictures, each one is very different from the next.

Me taking a selfie with a Robot

The most awesome thing that I saw there was a robot named Pepper, made by Soft Bank Robotics. Pepper is a robot that can talk to you, and I even gave the robot a fist bump! 

The Science Museum was very fun! After we visited the Science Museum, we took the tube to a place where we could take the train to the London Gatwick Airport so that we could fly home. We ate at Pret-a-Manger before we went home. I got a ham and egg sandwich, Levi got a Pickle and Ham sandwich, and my Mom got a salad. 

After we finished eating, we had to go fast to our gate because we were boarding. Luckily there was an enormous line and we had to wait to board. Once we boarded we had about a 2 Hour flight home and then we were back in Dublin!!!

Here is some secret footage of Levi being crazy!

We finally get back home at around 8:00 PM! End of our amazing London Trip! It was so awesome because if my Mom did not re book this trip since Drake canceled his last show, we wouldn't got to have this awesome time. Thanks Mama! 

-March 22, 2017 (17 Days till go back to GR)

--Jackson G. 

-The Blarney Blogger