How I Prevented A Robbery

Last summer, I was at my house with my brother on a hot summer day. It was just like any other summer day. I got up at 10:00 am, which was really late for me. It was a slow but relaxing morning, as summer mornings should be. I was feeling quite lazy and was not motivated to do a whole lot. The neighborhood was already humming with activities. I could see the gardeners working on the lawns, some handy-men going about their jobs, kids riding on bikes and some folks on their daily run.
After a breakfast of pancakes and milk, I watched some TV, and then played some basketball outside with my brother. 
I was losing 20 to 50 points because my brother is older and bigger than me. He kept blocking my shots. But I never gave up. It began to get hot, so we decided to go indoors to cool off. 
I was now sitting by the kitchen table reading a book. The book was boring and I was looking outside when I saw a white car pull up in front of my neighbor’s house. At first I thought it was my neighbor’s car, but then realized it was not. It was a old beaten up white car and looked it did not belong to our neighborhood. Then I thought it could be a someone visiting my neighbor. But the car kept standing there for more than ten minutes and the driver did not get out. That was strange. I could see the person sitting inside and he wasn’t really doing anything, just sitting. I told my brother that there was a random car outside our neighbor’s house whose driver was not getting out. That did not interest him at all as he continued to do what he was going. I ignored it too. We were now playing the Big 2 game with cards and I was beating him this time.
As we continued to play cards, I got thirsty and decided to go get a drink of water from the kitchen. I can see my neighbor’s home from the kitchen window and took a look outside and the white car was still there. Both of us were now keeping an eye on it. We saw a man coming out with something wrapped up in a black garbage bag. I could tell that he was pretending to act as if that was normal, but he was sweating a lot and looked a bit nervous. My brother and I saw the man putting something in his car trunk and we noticed that it was a computer. We started discussing what we should do. We saw another guy come out with something again in a black garbage bag. We called my mom who told us that our neighbors were in Tahoe and we should call the cops just to be cautious. I told my brother that we should call the police to notify them of the strangers in the neighborhood. We had the local police number written down close to the phone so we did not have to hunt for the phone number. My brother is a Boy Scout, so he has learned how to be alert and be aware of his surroundings. He quickly took down the license plate of the white car which was a smart thing to do. We called the police.
When I was on the phone with the police, they asked me the address of where the robber was and I told them as I could clearly see the house number painted on the curb. Another question they asked me was if I could see the license plate and I said, “Yes” and I gave it to them. They wanted the make and color of the car. I told them it was a Toyota. They also asked for a description of the people and what they were wearing. I described the men as best as I could. The police officers thought this matched description a of robbers they were trying to arrest. The last question they asked me was what my name and address was. I spelled out my full name and home phone number and address. I was surprised to see the police arrive as I hung up. I went outside with my brother to tell them which house it was. I was pointing to the one across the street. The cops went inside the house and they searched the home. There were five cop cars that came. In one room they found the robbers. They were really scared. There were two men in all. 
They were wearing black clothes and had black masks on their faces. The cops told the men to put their hands up. One of the men tried to run but tripped on a rock in the front yard, and found himself surround by police officers when he got up. 
The cops stayed there for almost two hours chatting with the neighbors. They met us and asked us lots of questions. We were very excited and didn’t mind answering them so many times. They seemed to ask the same question in many different ways, but we were having too much fun for a boring summer day.
That evening, the whole neighborhood found out about our heroism, since someone posted an article about the robbery on our neighborhood discussion group. Lots of friends and neighbors stopped by to thank me. My neighbor even gave me a gift certificate to GAME STOP. 
They knew we loved video games. The next week Saratoga News published an article about us and how we had prevented a robbery. We were very glad to have prevented a robbery and that was the highlight of our summer vacation.

My Trip To Connecticut

On February 28th, 2010 my dad, my brother, and I flew to Connecticut to watch a college basketball game. We literally decided a couple days before to make that trip, with a mad scramble to purchase airline and game tickets. We left at midnight and were on a three and a half hour flight to Minneapolis, Minnesota from San Francisco. We changed flights and this next flight was a two and a half hour flight. It was 11AM by the time we landed in Connecticut at Bradley International Airport.

We got picked up by one of my dad’s friend who lived in Connecticut. We were finally at the University of Connecticut (UCONN) campus. It was huge with lots of tall buildings. We ate breakfast in the student cafeteria. After we ate breakfast we entered Gample Pavilion. Some students were painting themselves blue in the bathroom, later we saw them on TV too. Connecticut was playing Louisville.

The game started at 2pm with Connecticut going on 5-0 run. UCONN fans were charged up. Louisville called a timeout immediately. Close to the end of the 1st half it was 45-37, Connecticut ahead with 7.5 seconds left. Louisville went up the court and made a lucky three at the buzzer to make it 45-40. UCONN didn’t have a good second half, turned the ball over many times and let Louisville back into the game. Louisville at one point led by 7 points with 7 minutes left, but with pressure defense UCONN played themselves back into the game and actually led by 3 with 4 minutes left. The whole stadium was going crazy and it was very loud!

When there were 30 seconds left in the game, it was tied at 86. Louisville’s Edgar Sosa made a layup and Connecticut was now losing by 2. After the time out, we stood behind the Uconn band near the exit since we had to get out quickly as my dad’s friend was waiting to take us back to the airport. My dad said that if the game goes into overtime we were going to miss the flight. When Connecticut had the ball they missed a layup, turned the ball over, and sadly lost the game.

I was sad when we drove back to the airport. We made our flight. We arrived home at 11:30 pm tired, but it was still fun.

My Math Olymiad Tournement

On April 3, 2010 our school participated in a Math Olympiad Tournament. This tournament had a team round and a individual round, but I am going to talk about the team round . The team round had teams from many school districts, including Saratoga’s which included 4th to 6th grade. Argonaut had two teams from 4th and 5th grade.

Argonaut’s 4th grade team included Dean, Lillian, Anthony, Hannah, and I. Dean was our leader. In the team round there were 10 question and 20 minutes to finish the questions. Each of us were assigned some questions from the 10. Once we finished our part, Dean checked all the questions from 1 through 10. We made a sheet so each of us could share answers and Dean could go over them. I think this was a good example of strategy and teamwork. After we finished our test we went over the solutions. We got one wrong, but we got 1st place because our individual round score mattered too and we did well with that. We couldn't believe we won over 6th graders. It was like a miracle win for Argonaut. We got a trophy, medals, and also a certificate. The 5th grade team from Argonaut was very good too. They got all ten correct but their individual scores was less then ours. It was a fun tournament! Our team was invited by Mr Chapman at the Friday assembly and congratulated too.