Category Archives: Fun

TEDxYouth@Austin

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TEDxYouth@Austin 2014. Probably the best event ever. Sure, it was from 12:30 to 6:30 but it was totally worth it — every second of it. I just went to it over the weekend on Sunday, February 16th, 2014. There were about 12 speakers, and a break in the middle. It was amazing! All the speakers were brilliant, all taking about different things. There was a man who did the BetterBlock Project, where he just went around his city— Dallas — and just made it look better and more interactive with the people living there. Another guy from Africa decided to make sure that everybody could bathe in sanitary water, he made the DryBath: a lotion that was a substitute for bathing in water. And finally, my favorite Jon Cozart from PAINT on YouTube talked about how he got into doing videos. Afterwards, I met him with Caitlyn (in the picture) and it was actually the best thing ever 🙂 TEDxYouth@Austin has a great experience for me, and I also went last year. It was so fun and eye-opening. I can’t wait for next years event!

Hillsong United : Welcome Zion

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November 25th was a pretty great day. The last day of school before Thanksgiving break, and it was pretty relaxed. Yeah, sure, I had a science yes, but I had prepared for it and did well. I was feeling great by the time 7th Period rolled around. I was so excited!

There’s this band called Hillsong United that I absolutely adore. They’re a Christian band that my family follows and listens to all the time. They were on their tour, Welcome Zion, and my sister and I had been kind of obsessing over their best album yet. Our parents had surprisingly agreed to take us to their concert in Houston and pick us up early to school to get there at 7:30.

I had just gotten to English and we started talking about our essays and poems we had been working on when somebody came in to give my teacher a note. ” Hannah David.” I jump up eagerly while my friend glances at me with a questioning look. I whisper “concert” to her as I walk past her. I get my note from my teacher, say ” Happy Thanksgiving ” under my breath, and walk out of the computer lab. I run down the stairs, get all my things together, and run back upstairs to go to the office. My dad greets me with a smile and says, ” Ready to go?” Like I would ever have an answer anything other then ” YES!” We walk out of the school, the heavy metal doors banging shut behind us.

I jump into the car and we listen to music and talk about how we can’t wait for the concert as we drive home. When we get home, we gather all of our things and make sure our bags are packed with everything we need to stay the night in Houston. By the time the concert probably gets over, we will all be too tired to do anything other than sleep, let alone drive back home for three hours. My mom finishes her last meeting, and we all get in the car again to drive to Westlake to pick up my sister. When she gets in the car, the trip officially begins. Mission Hillsong United is in motion.

We get there just in time, and we run up to get our seats. The Reliant Arena is humongous, and as I scanned the crowd, I realized how many people can come together just for one cause. It’s pretty amazing to think that thousands of people all over the world enjoy the same things I do. The opening performance is by Young and Free, a youth branch off of Hillsong United. They are amazing, and very talented. After them, we wait for 40 minutes until Hillsong United comes out. I have to say, it was worth the wait. They play all of my favorite songs from their old albums, including a one where all the band members are dancing and running around on stage, one of the main singers are singing into a megaphone, and top it all off the ground is literally vibrating.

The concert ends at 11:37 PM, and I have to say, I was stunned. I’ve been to 2 concerts of their’s before, but this one was by far the best. I had so much fun, and the rest of Thanksgiving weekend, I was still marveling how perfect that night was.

Harvest Festival

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Last week on Saturday, my church had its annual Harvest Festival. We support a lot of missionaries, and this entire festival’s earnings go towards all the missionaries. Everything is with tickets, and each ticket is one dollar. So as you would guess, with about 75 families, we would get a lot of money to send to the missions. My family and I always help out with making the Harvest Festival spectacular, and it’s always really fun!

3:00 PM is when everybody usually starts coming. We still have a sermon, but instead of starting at 5:00 PM, on Harvest Festival we start at 3:45 PM so there is a lot of time to be outside after the sermon while it’s still light outside. There is great food, and usually cotton candy and noodles additional to all the regular Indian foods, like spring rolls, poori, you get it. I always hang out with my friends, and we get our faces painted. Usually by each other, because my friends and I are the ones who man the face painting station. Other than face painting, we have lots and lots of games. We have darts, musical chairs, and plenty of other games. At 7:00 PM, that’s when the auction starts. Now when you think of the word “auction”, the first word that probably comes to mind is “serious”. But not for the Austin Christian Fellowship of India. No sir, for ACFI, everything is easygoing, laid back, and just plain funny. The same guy does it every year, and he is hilarious. So you would imagine how everybody would be fine with staying till about 9:30, and this year it was even later than that. The whole thing was just great, and as a bonus, at the end, everybody gets byrianni. And everybody loves food.

Harvest Festival usually includes a lot of pictures, and this year was no different. People were taking pictures for our church’s website, and at the Harvest Festival is usually when a lot of people take their family pictures. I should probably tell you now, I am NOT a photogenic person. Even when I know people are taking pictures of me, even when I’m staring straight at the camera and smiling my very best smile, I just can’t look good. So yeah… I don’t even know how to look natural when people say “SMILE!” I just kind of look at the camera and and try smiling kind of decent. But now you know, I am not one of those people who have a superhuman ability to look great in every single picture, even if they don’t even know someone is taking pictures of them. And that, my friend, is why Harvest Festival is the low point of my appearance.

This year, since we were um…”old enough” as some people said, we got to go in the bounce house at like 9:00 PM. And in November, 9:00 PM is pitch black. But that didn’t mean anything to us so we still did it. Yeah, probably not the best idea. Our time in the bounce house felt like a long time when it was probably just 20 or 30 minutes. It included lots of screams, all high pitched because well, we are middle school girls… And a lot of minor injuries to places like elbows and knees. Yup, never go in a bounce house when it’s pitch black outside… But it was great, and I had an amazing time.

I love Harvest Festival. I really do. I’ve been to every single one of them, and I never get bored when I’m there. I had a lot of fun at ACFI’s Harvest Festival for 2013.

Newsboys Concert

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Last Sunday, I went to the Newsboys concert. SoundWave opened for them, followed by Grace Campbell, and then Rapture Ruckus. The Newsboys were on their Restart World Tour, and last Sunday was their last day in Austin. They played at ACL, and then they came over to Great Hills Baptist Church, and that’s where I was. They played all of the songs on their album, Restart, and then they played some of their old songs including Something Beautiful, Born Again, and God’s Not Dead. Some of my favorites from the Restart album were Restart, Change the World, That Home, and Love Like I Mean It. The concert was amazing, and I really enjoyed it.

Volleyball

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6:37 PM. I get off the bleachers and jog onto the court. The A Team just finished playing, and they had won the first one, lost the second one, and returned with an amazing comeback and finished it up, winning the last game. I was so nervous, knowing that this game was the first game going on our record. I kept trying to think positive thoughts, but it wasn’t exactly easy do because I had heard Marble Falls were a really hard team. Despite all of that, I lined up, and started doing warmups. All through the passing, all I could think about was how we absolutely needed to win. Finally, we started serving. Every single one of my serves sailed perfectly over the net, so I thought that things were looking pretty promising. I knew I shouldn’t get over confident, so I pushed all thoughts of winning out of my head. First half of the first game, and we were doing great. Calling the balls, have perfect passes, sets, and once we even spiked it over. We won that game 25 to 19. We knew we still shouldn’t get over confident, because we still had to win one more game. The second game, things weren’t looking so good. We would always be tied, and then the other team would get one point.We weren’t calling the ball, people would just watch the ball drop to the floor, and almost none of our serves went over. We lost that game 18 to 21. Still, we were hopeful. One more game, we could win this. The third game started off okay, with our team being always 3 to 4 points ahead of the other team. We played hard, got almost all of our serves over, and we finished the game with an amazing pass that could not be returned. We won that game 25 to 17, and there was a lot of screaming, and jumping up and down. The first game that went on our record, and we totally conquered it.