Nandan Nair

11:59 PM. December 31. The last day of 2017.

As they stood in the cold at Times Square, they started looking back on the year, with all the good things, and not so good things. While some said, “That was a great year!”, others said “I’m so glad this year is over!”. As the final seconds set in, they all counted down the seconds. 3, 2, 1, 0. 2018 had arrived. The year 2017 was an amazing year for me, with many accomplishments.

• During the first half of June of 2017, I went on a school trip to Camp Wing, in Duxbury MA. You can read more about it using the link below: http://nandannair.com/camp-wing-trip-2017/
• Ever since the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, I had wanted to play in a soccer league, specifically in the local soccer league, Quincy Youth Soccer (QYS). Finally, in the spring of 2017, I got to play in the league. It was nice to finally be able to play actual games, and not just practice with friends.
• One of the new things I tried this year was the annual school play. Each year, the school does an annual play. I have recently become interested in film production, so I decided to try it out. It turned out to be very fun, and a great experience. You can read more about it on this link: http://nandannair.com/singin-in-the-rain-jr-my-first-play/
• Along with joining QYS, I also tried out for the Quincy Travel team. The travel team is a part of the much more competitive league, where teams play against teams from other cities and towns in MA. It is tougher and more competitive than QYS, but is fun as well. The requirements to be eligible to try out for the team is that you must have played at least 2 seasons in QYS. Thankfully for me, the fall season of QYS ended just before the try outs, making me eligible to try out. Because there were so many people who tried out, there were three teams: the A team, B team, and C team. I managed to get a spot on the B team. This is a huge accomplishment for me, and I hope to do well in the Travel season, which starts in the Spring.
• In the summer, I also started learning computer programming. It was a class that explained the basics of JavaScript, a programming language. We used the computer programming tutorials of Khan Academy to learn the basics of JavaScript. It was a good experience, and I had lot of fun doing it.
• During this same time, I also went to Los Angeles, California, to visit my aunt and uncle. The flight from Boston was 6 ½ hours long, but once we arrived in LA, we had a lot of fun. We first went to Disney California Adventure Park. We also went to the Santa Monica beach. The city was very nice and there were many expensive stores and cool cars. I saw many Ferraris, Lamborghinis, and Maseratis. On the final day, we visited the UCLA, and I got to see the film school there. There was also a soccer field were Real Madrid would be practicing! However, we would be at the airport by the time the players got there, so we couldn’t see them.

• At the start of the school year, I also started learning French. In 8th grade, we have the choice of taking a foreign language instead of a reading class. The 2 options were Spanish and French. Spanish was, in truth, the easier class and most people choose it, but I knew that Spanish was easy to learn around in the US, and that learning French would require more work. Thus, I decided to take French. The class is very fun, and we’ve finished learning basic conversation (Hello, how are you, what do you like to do, how old are you, etc), and on to more advanced questions, grammar, etc.

Hopefully, 2018 will be an even better year than 2017. Happy New Year 2018 to all of you!