Sistories is a brand new podcast about travel hosted by two sisters–Maryam and Nour! https://stonesoup.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Sistories-Ep2-1.m4a Hi everyone, welcome to our new podcast, Sistories. My sister and I love to travel and we want to inspire you to travel too. That’s why we are hosting this cool new podcast. Last month we did our first episode about why you should travel. Today, we are going to be talking about how to pack for an amazing trip no matter where you go. I am Maryam, and I will be going first. So, how to pack… Well, first here is what to pack for those those extra bags that you take on the plane or in the car with you. First, you should always bring a device in case you get bored or your parents are sleeping. Second, I recommend you bring a notebook to write stuff in, and don’t forget a great book to entertain you. Traveling can take a lot of hours and you don’t want to just have to sit and do nothing because that’s boring. You might want to bring extra clothes in your bag. We didn’t once, and that didn’t go well. That story is coming up next. So, you’re probably wondering what happened. It started like any normal trip. It felt very exciting because we were going to Italy. We checked our bags, which had a lot of clothes in them because we were going to be gone for two weeks. When we were about to go in the sky, one of the airline attendants made an announcement and said, “We will be taking some luggage off the plane so please see if that was you.” My parents didn’t check because they never thought it would be us; its never us! Sadly, when we landed in Italy, and we got off the plane thinking everything was okay, we sat a long long time at the baggage claim but our luggage did not appear. So, we asked an attendant, but they couldn’t help. They said if they find it they would drop it off at our hotel. We had to buy a lot of clothes in Italy. In the final four days we finally got our luggage, but it was too late. This is why half of our clothes have Italian words on them like “Ciao.” The moral of the story is that you might want to pack some clothes in your carry-on bags. Thanks Maryam. Hi my name is Nour, and I’m going to tell you some other tips for packing. First, you will need to ask your parents some questions like how long you’re going for and what type of trip it will be. My mom used to give us a piece of paper with a list of everything we need to pack, and then we would go to our room and pack it. And then she would check. To be honest, I usually just stuff my clothes in the suitcase, but my sister packs her clothes pretty neatly so yes, there are different styles for packing. Now that my sister and I are older, we usually don’t get a list to check off. All we do now is ask how long we are going and then pack the right number of outfits based on the weather. Obviously, if you are going to the beach where it’s hot, you will pack different clothes than if you were heading to someplace cold and snowing. I also pack some pretty clothes in case we’re going out to dinner or to do something fancy. That’s important because you want to be prepared. For your carry-on bag you might want to bring extra underwear… You heard our Italy story! And I guess that you should bring your own headphones too so that you don’t have to wait on the airplane to get them. You also might want to pack a mask in case you need it since Covid is always around. Last but not least, you should always bring gum or something to chew on for take off and landing. If you have braces and chew gum, you barely have any left at the end because it’s all in your teeth. Most of these tips go for any kind of transportation but here is one thing to know just about cars: First, you can bring a book, but do not read it while you’re in the car. When I do that I get really sick after only 4 or 5 minutes. Thank you for listening to our podcast, Sistories. Come back again to listen to our next topic: Cool Places to Visit. Have a great trip!
Young Bloggers
Level Up Your Gaming Experience, Lexing Liu, 11
From Metroid, the pixelated action-adventure game, to Minecraft, the freedom-filled sandbox game, there is no limitation to what games you can access. However, there is only limited time and resources to expend, so you must be careful about what games you decide to play. Mario Kart, Pokémon, and Ringfit are all games you can access on the Nintendo Switch, the current most popular console, so we will center around these games. Mario Kart is a deceivingly complex game. I mean, what difficulty can you have driving around a racetrack? If you find yourself in the path of a red shell, what can you do? How can you turn efficiently? There are many tips and tricks to see. To start things off, one thing you may not have noticed while playing in-game is using an item to block another. Sure enough, if you hold down the item button, you can keep the item safely behind your back to defend yourself from a potential attack which would slow you down a lot, especially if your vehicle has slow acceleration. Even the blue shell, which specifically targets the player in first place, can be deflected using a boombox item, although these are hard to come by from the random item generator. There are further reasons this game is more complex than it looks. For one, you can drift. Holding the drift button while turning lets you drift, and you get a temporary speed boost when you release it. The longer you hold the button, the stronger the charge gets, and you just might be able to get the fabled PURPLE DRIFT. These are the two most well-known tips in Mario Kart, but there is a deeper purpose in this game and more tricks lie ahead. Not only can you play this locally with your friends on one console, you can connect across town to play online races (despite slight lag). Alright, if you prefer quest games, Pokémon might be the game for you. Now, this is no Pokémon card game. The characters are the same, but there is PLOT! There are also various battle gyms where you challenge the gym leader and raids where you fight 4v1 against a powerful wild Pokémon. If you play the newly released version, there are power ups, which give your ride Pokémon special powers and there is more challenge with a new villain team out there. There is a Terestal phenomenon where you can change the type of your Pokémon entirely, which gives each battle a twist. The humor and the challenge keeps you with the game, and gives you an entirely new perspective from which you can see the unfolding action. As great as these games are, both have a hefty price tag of sixty dollars. This is often an unfriendly punch towards your wallet, and you may want to hover around the free games, but the free games have more in-game purchases that harm your wallet further than these one-time purchases. Although these games cost a lot, they are easily worth saving up for because of the enjoyment you get from playing them. There are many games to choose from, but there is only enough time and resources for a few of the best games, and these are two of my favorites.
We will fly higher, Reviewed by Caroline Gao, 12
“Once upon a time, from a wounded land/ My family was pushed to leave our homeland,” writes Parwana Amiri in her book of poems, We will fly higher. This collection focuses on her love for her homeland, Afghanistan, and her experiences as a refugee at Lesvos Island. She writes about the feeling of her loss of identity and her longing for safety after losing her country to war. In the book, she portrays the untold stories of refugees who are silently calling out for help. Parwana uses poetic devices such as repetition, punctuation, and sensory detail to emphasize the emotion inside her poems. We will fly higher begins with a poem, “We are burning,” about a family of refugees who lost their child in a fire. They mourn the loss of the baby and challenge their oppressors to imagine the situation that they now live in. The last poem, “The Displaced,” recounts the poet’s life as a refugee. She reflects her struggles and the small flicker of hope that remains inside her. She passionately encourages each reader to work hard to give each refugee their rights back. The poet uses repetition frequently to make her messages strong. The emphasis is especially powerful when she repeats the structure. For example, in the poem “Your Eyes Bother Us,” the same four line stanza is repeated seven times throughout the poem. Five end with the verse “Your eyes bother us!” The stanzas reflect the idea that outsiders should not be bystanders but instead protest for change. She also repeats the use of exclamation marks, which convey strong emotion. When Parwana wrote about her homeland, she used sensory detail to make the reader feel as if they were with her in that moment of her childhood. In “Greetings to nature,” she describes her homeland: “Hey green fields, touch my knees” and “Hey sky, welcome my night / Through your smiling, sparkling stars.” Her attention to detail shows her deep love for her home, Afghanistan. Although refugees have lost their power to speak in their homeland, she protests the loss of power through words on paper, which are just as loud as their voices. In many of the poems, the poet writes about how she will not stop until all refugees gain their rights back. In the poem “The Displaced” she writes, “We will raise the sails of freedom…I am committed to that struggle! For no one is free, until we are!” She vows to never stop writing and protesting. Her drive and emotion aim to empower the reader to join refugees in their struggle instead of being a bystander. Ultimately, I would recommend this book to anyone who loves poetry and is interested in learning more about the untold stories of refugees and the beauty and culture of Afghanistan. We will fly higher by Parwana Amiri. Palewell Press, 2022. Buy the book here and help support Stone Soup in the process!
