Sam Explores Vietnam

In June I went on a trip to Vietnam for two weeks, and it was a blast!  The trip went all over vietnam and we got to see a lot of the countryside as well as the larger cities.

We started the trip in Ho Chi Minh city (also known as Saigon) with a trip to an outdoor museum for the Vietnam War. It was somber, but interesting. We got to see many of the traps the Vietcong used in the war, as well as cool propaganda footage. After that we went to the Mekong Delta, a beautiful region of vietnam with many rivers.  

There were so many boats!

After Mekong it was back to Ho Chi Minh for a flight to Hoi An. We had a lot of fun shopping and exploring. But we also went on a very cool “eco tour” where we saw traditional farming methods and rice paddies.

A field we helped water

Me riding a water buffalo

After Hoi An we went to Da Nang, and saw the beautiful marble mountain and some of the caves inside.

The view from the top of marble mountain. The city goes up to the base!

After Da Nang we went to Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. We got to see some of the ruins of the old imperial city. After our first day in Hanoi we took a train to Sapa, in the mountains of northern vietnam. There we got to see the incredible landscape, shaped over hundreds of years into rice paddies over every valley.

The Sapa region has many rice paddies like the ones in this picture

We did some light hiking to reach our very cool homestay, and in the morning hiked back to the town to catch our train back to Hanoi.

After that we went to one of the most beautiful places in Vietnam, Halong bay. Its really difficult to describe how impressive the bay is, but it was truly a sight to behold. The rocks towering above our ship were truly astounding. You should google for some pictures, its so cool.

After a night on the ship we drove back to Hanoi, and after a night of rest & shopping we finally left to come back home.

The trip was truly a wonder, and it was so great to see some of the most impressive parts of this beautiful country

A photo of our group. I actually don't know why I'm so far from everyone else.

Miniature Children No Longer

It's no secret that my birth children are of diminutive stature. Steve and I take the blame entirely - we were both exceedingly late bloomers and our poor boys inherited all that and then some. Fortunately, they're both large of spirit if not of stature, so they take it all in stride, but we find it continually humorous that our Chinese daughter continues to lead the family in height-by-age.

There are plenty of benefits to being a late bloomer. For example, clothes last longer because one doesn't grow out of them. But over the past few months I've noticed that the boys pants are magically transforming into clamdiggers. We recently updated our height chart and, check it out, Ben has grown a full 5" in the last year! No wonder that boy takes so many naps!

So, of course, we had to do another back-to-back-to-back measurement test and it has finally happened... my boys have surpassed me in stature.

Well done, boys, well done.

Sam's Trip to Yellowstone

by Sam

 As part of the last few weeks, my school usually does an expedition to somewhere cool. This year I went to Yellowstone National Park.  Here are pictures of some highlights.

We first went to Yellowstone bear world, a place more than an hour from Yellowstone (Confusing, I know). It's one of those drive through Safaris, and we got to throw food at the bears. Seen here is a bear sitting down.(The guide said they have learned that gets them more food, and he was very right)

The next day we went to see old faithful. You might have heard of it, its supposed to be famous or something. Its not obvious in the picture, but that is spewing water more than 50 feet!

Seen here is a bacterial mat. Those mixing colors are the result of different bacteria living in different temperatures.

Right here is a steam vent. It is very tall, as exhibited by the people standing to the right of it

Yellowstone really looks scary, almost alien

This is a picture of the Grand Canyon (Of Yellowstone). The Grand Canyon (Of Yellowstone) was carved by a river running through it. This waterfall is massive. If you look to the top right of it, there are people standing there.
Please note that The Grand Canyon (Of Yellowstone) is nowhere near Arizona or the actual Grand Canyon

I might be a dirty rotten liar, because this picture isn't actually from Yellowstone. It's from the Grand Tetons National Park. It was on the way home, so we went to visit.

This is a picture of a stream. It looks pretty.

 I think it was very fun to go to Yellowstone, and it was cool to see just how weird the earth can be

The Best Day of My Life (So Far)

by Sam

Saturday, February 18th has marked a momentous occasion in the morningstar household; Sam's(Henceforth known as me('s?)) 16th birthday. Upon this notable occasion much rejoicing occurred and much candy was consumed. The festivities begun at the early hour of 8:30 (teenagers, am I right?) with the traditional opening of the things.

Many things were received, including, but not limited to:

A box of shiny paper

A driving camera, since I am sixteen and (theoretically) can get my license. Of course, I only have 20 of my 40 required driving hours, so that is a ways out.

I also got an HTC Vive! For the uninformed, the HTC Vive is a virtual reality headset that lets you walk around and interact with the room using sophisticated motion controllers. It is amazeballs.

As you can see, I was very impressed with how black the unplugged headset is.

Skipping to the party, here you can see me swinging the controller around wildly. As an aside, how awesome you feel in VR is directly linked to how dorky you look.

I couldn't leave all the VR to myself though, and so here is one of my friends playing a rather interesting game. As you can see, he is standing on a plank roughly 5 centimeters(Translation: 2 inches) above the ground. To his eyes however, the plank is suspended at the top of a skyscraper, deadly drop to either side. This is a great example of my vr awesomeness theorem, especially when he falls off.

Unfortunately, the human body cannot play videogames forever without food, and needs to eat eventually. Lacking nutrient-rich material, I settled for an ice cream cake.

Lastly, another image of me looking into a darkened headset (You can even see it's unplugged! I fell to the dork side on this one)

[Editor's Note: I asked if we could take a birthday picture. I was told yes, as long as the VR helmet was included. I couldn't argue... it's his birthday and since I haven't seen him without the helmet for the last 24-48 hours it seemed only appropriate]

My Kid is Driving

My kid is driving.

Admittedly, I should have seen it coming. What with him turning 15, us paying for and transporting him to and from driver's ed, and him passing the written learner's permit test, the signs were all there.

But. Wow. There's truly nothing one can do to prepare oneself for the sight of one's child actually controlling a vehicle.

Sam's going to be a great driver. He's keen to learn. He's committed to practicing. He has perfected the art of elevating the seat up high enough so he can see over the steering wheel.

But. Holy crap. My kid is driving.

Reflections on Serving - Sam

Hogar de Amor is the best place in the world. Its amazing to watch the kids play so happily, despite the turmoil they left at home to come to the orphanage. What I mean is that the situation has to be really bad at home for the kids to come to Hogar de Amor. In Mexico, family is everything. The kids only go to the hogar if nobody else in the extended family is able take them.

Adoption is also very difficult in Mexico as well, bordering on impossible. So that leaves the kids in the orphanage until adulthood. And yet, despite it all, these kids are happier than a lot of people in America, where people have a lot more going for them than these kids.

I truly find this beautiful and inspiring, and gives me something happy to think about when I'm feeling down. I am so glad that we found Hogar de Amor, and that I get to serve the kids and caregivers, and help this wonderful place do its wonderful work. I hope Hogar de Amor can do this for years and years to come.

Sam's trip to Sam Fransisco

A picture of the city skyline from a boat

( A quick note: This post was written, produced, directed, managed, and created by Samuel Morningstar)

 I recently went to San Fransisco for a school trip, and it was a lot of fun. San Fransisco, for those of you who don't know (I hope that you all know) is a city on the California coast. It is famous for its seafood and several landmarks, including the golden gate bridge.

 We (We being me and the ~20 other students on the trip) saw a lot of cool sights, and I really enjoyed the trip.

 On the first day we went to the exploratorium, which is sort of like a children's museum in that it has a lot of hands on exhibits that teach cool concepts.

One of the cells in Alcatraz

 For lunch we went to the hard rock cafe, and the food was pretty good. 

 On the second day we went to Alcatraz, one of, if not the most infamous prison in history. The most interesting thing about Alcatraz is its history. It was originally a civil war fort, built to protect the port of San Fransisco. After Alcatraz we had lunch on pier 39, which was really good, and finished the day at the aquarium.

 The third and final day we went to the golden gate bridge which was really cool, shopped at a chocolate factory(yum), rode on a cable car(awesome!), went to chinatown for souvenirs and lunch, then topped it all off with a quick visit to pier 31.

So there you have it. That was how I spent my trip to San Fransisco.

The golden gate bridge, as I saw it on day 3

The whole group I was with. I'm front row, fourth from the right

Sam's Fourteenth Birthday

This week my baby boy turned fourteen.  FOURTEEN! And since he's off at a church youth retreat this weekend - A YOUTH RETREAT - I get to post whatever I want to about his fourteenth birthday without him looking over my shoulder.  FOURTEENTH BIRTHDAY!

Oh my goodness. I know this makes me sound even older than having a fourteen-year-old child already suggested, but the time is passing unreasonably and terrifyingly quickly!

Celebration part 1: Birthday party.

Once again, Sam took full charge of planning his party, which meant there were Doritos, pizza, and video games.

I have to say that I think we outdid ourselves on the cake. I was going to make a SNES controller cake, like Ben's cake last year only different because I'm informed those controllers are worlds apart, but cooler heads prevailed when Steve insisted we just design a cake and then get somebody else to do the actual icing part. Steve and Sam did the sweet head and title replacement and the rest was all Target.

And we used one of our signature candles. For some reason, all of the candles in our "assorted" order were pink. But nobody minded once the fireworks began!

He succeeded in blowing out all the candles in one breath, so Sam got his birthday wish, which we're all pretty sure included more pizza and video games (granted!).

Celebration part 2: Concert!

This week was the second-annual Qualtrics Insight Summit (more to come on that later) and, like most conferences, we brought in a musical act. Unlike most conferences, the act was awesome.

Yes, we had a private concert with Journey on the very day of Sam's 14th birthday.

Happily, we even got to bring a few friends along

And we all wore our Qualtrics-y finest

THESE WERE OUR SEATS. FOR JOURNEY.

WE KID YOU NOT

It was completely amazing

And that's how Sam celebrated his fourteenth birthday.

Sam - every year you seem to get cooler, smarter, and kinder. Keep it up, kid. We are so proud of you.

And we'll see what we can do about bringing in a private concert with a legendary band for your next birthday. But you may need to settle for video games, pizza, and Doritos.

My (Sam's) new glasses

(The below text is of Sams opinions and does not reflect the views of the entire morningstar household, namely Ben, because he thinks the glasses are nerdy)

Well, as the title said, I have a new accessory, and they ROCK! I totally composed this song for it:  ♪ I can see clearly now, the rain fog has gone! I can see something something in my way♪.

Above is somewhat like what I saw before the glasses(More or less), below is what I see now.

Well, as Porky Pig said: "dahoy  dahoy  dahoy, Thats all folks"

Easy as Pi

by Sam

Over the past year I've sort of started programming. I first got introduced to the idea when my father bought a Raspberry Pi. On it was installed a little program called Scratch. It looked pretty simple, not as hard as I had envisioned programming most of the time, and I asked Dad about some sort of class over the summer.  And so began a great journey.

So I started with Scratch (here's a couple of things I've done: http://scratch.mit.edu/users/samamstar/) and opened a door. For the next 3/4 of a year I mostly just stuck with Scratch thinking that a command line would be really difficult (Scratch is a very simple connect block thing). But I heard Python was really simple as far as command line programming goes and Dad had bought a book on programming in Python when we bought the Pi so I decided to try it.

The main reason I decided to get interested in Python was because the Raspberry Pi had a version of Minecraft for it that you could use a Python API to program it. So I've made a Minesweeper in Minecraft and a snake game. I've been working on Tetris, but that's not going very well.

And on my birthday what might I get but a programmable robot made out of Legos! I saved all my Christmas and birthday money and with a big jump from my grandparents (thanks Grammy!) I could afford it. So far I've made a scorpion that can move its legs, a snake that can attack you, and a shell game. Here's a demonstration of something I've made:

In the future I hope to use experience like this in a job. But for now it's just for fun.