Yani Ye's Blog

 Earlier today, I competed in my 3rd ice skating competition, this being the first of the 22-23 season.  Though I had not been out performing on the ice in a few months, this performance I feel was the best out of all the others I had, and for many reasons.  This competition was the biggest out of the 3 I competed in, and also had the most skaters within my category. My competition was at Anaheim Ice Rink, and the event is called Spring Spectacular. From my last program/routine from October, I had a new, freshly choreographed number. I skated to the song Minor Swing, from Chocolat, and loved the piece, as it contains unique sounds/instruments.  My dress this time around was borrowed from another skater, and was a bright red with rhinestones all around. My costume also included red silk gloves and a flowery, red hairpiece. I personally loved my dress & accessories, and feel like it definitely matches the song.  As for my performance, I preformed pretty well. ...

 Recently, on Tuesday, March 14, I had my first ever band concert. My performance was with the whole band, and was the first experience I had playing an instrument on stage. I was slightly nervous, but everything went pretty well & smoothly. I play the tenor saxophone with my school band, and there are 2 other tenors who play in our band. Since I joined Stanford this year, I am in beginning band mostly with 6th graders. This concert was with every band at our school, beginning, intermediate, advanced, and jazz band. I liked the fact that each class could see what the others classes were working on, and see the differences with each song. At the concert, we played 3 pieces, Infinity Concert March, Aztec Sunrise, and Skygazer Fanfare. Out of the 3, I feel like we play Skygazer the best, since it is the hardest piece we have and we spent the most time on it because of that. The first song we played, Infinity, is an exciting piece which is supposed to feel like a marching band star...

 As it currently is February , black history month, I have learned a fair amount in my classes and also do extra research just to expand my knowledge. I recently read this one article I found online entitled, "Gandhi's Use of Nonviolence Was a Guiding Light for Martin Luther King," and was intrigued. I did not know any of the information in the article, and it even shocked me that there were others before King who used nonviolence for some reason. Nevertheless, I learned a lot of new things, and am grateful for all the activists who have made changes to our society . After reading the article, “Gandhi’s Use of Nonviolence Was a Guiding Light for Martin Luther King,” I have gained new insights and understandings about how Gandhi inspired MLK in using non violence to fight for what he wanted. According to the article, Dr. MLK Jr. used inspiration from Gandhi to inspire the use of nonviolence in the Montgomery bus boycott. I have definitely heard of the Montgomery bus boyco...

The passing Friday, it was my final day of my first semester of middle school. I cannot believe how fast time has flown since I started middle school, half of my seventh grade year is already gone, and that does make me feel sad.  First off, my friends have been the people who make school fun for me everyday, and without them there everyday, I would honestly hate going to school, they just make everything so much more exciting & are always there for me when needed. Since I have arrived at Stanford, I have made many, many new friends, all of them with different & unique personalities. Of course, being in middle school means a lot of drama, especially between girls. However, there has been little to no drama within my friends so far, so I am proud that I made the right choices with who I chose to become friends with. My teachers have also had such an impact on not only how much I have been able to grow as a student, but also how I have been able to adjust, moving schools. I a...

Recently, I did further research about my history class's current unit, Ancient China, and decided to write about the geographic land & its impact towards the Chinese back in the day for extra credit. I used our school textbook, and learned a good amount of things that I was not taught specifically in class.   The geographic land around us has a huge impact in our daily habits & doings, our reachable sources, and the amount of protection offered to us by the natural world.  For example, during the Chinese Sui dynasty, their leader, Yangdi, decided to connect two natural resources, rivers, into a large, widely accessible, canal. Along with providing an extra source of water for the people of China, the canal also acted as a trading resource. According to the article,  "The grand canal made it easier to ship products (such as rice) between Sothern and Northern China."  Without this partly natural resource, things would be harder to transport from place to place...

 For my science class, we are wrapping up our first unit (geology on Mars), and were given the task to write a scientific argument "letter" about a specific channel on Mars based on all of the information we learned during the unit. Dear Universal Space Agency,  I have figured out what formed the mystery channel on Mars. The evidence we discovered supports the claim that flowing water created the channel. Below is my evidence & reasoning to support the flowing water claim. My first piece of evidence are the satellite images of channels formed on Earth by flowing water. The images of the Earth channels show curves and branches, similar to how the mystery channel on Mars looks. As both Mars & Earth are similar rocky planets, having a similar shaped channel could mean that they were created by the same geologic process (in this case, water). My second piece of evidence is the flowing water model lab, and how the water channel held its shape even after water stopped flowi...

 Continuing on from my last post, a 2022 wrap up/reflection, my 2022 summer is probably the most memorable so far. I spent the majority of my summer at Monte Verde Day Camp, where I have been going since I was six, but am now way more mature and old. Because of this, I am now more able to talk to the counselors, and am almost like an assistant with kids and running the camp. I made many new friends this summer, and a few even went to the upcoming school I was new to. My summer was honestly so much fun, we went to many amusement park field trips, and I spent my 12th birthday with all of my friends and counselors there. When I wasn't at Monte Verde, I was either at FECC summer review school, or in Hawaii!!!! FECC is more for younger kids, so being the oldest there made things pretty boring (which is why I switched to Monte Verde). One of the funniest memories I have of 2022 is during the 4th of July block party in my neighborhood. We were getting ready to see the fireworks, and my cl...